When I was a child I lived in Canada and in Minnesota. I was a little wild savage. In Minnesota there were swamps where I used to wet my feet in the spring, and there were fields of tall grass where I would lie flat on my stomach in company with lizards and little garter snakes. And there were poplar leaves that turned their pale green backs upward on a hot afternoon, and soon there would be terrific thunder and lightning and rain. And there were robins that sang at dawn. These things stay with one always. And there were children with whom I used to play and fight. I was tanned and sunburned, and I had an unkempt appearance. My face was very dirty. The original pattern of my frock was invariably lost in layers and vistas of the native soil. My hair was braided or else it flew about, a tangled maze, according as I could be caught by some one and rubbed and straightened before I ran away for the day. My hands were little and strong and brown, and wrought much mischief. I came and went at my own pleasure. I ate what I pleased; I went to bed all in my own good time; I tramped wherever my stubborn little feet chose. I was impudent; I was contrary; I had an extremely bad temper; I was hard-hearted; I was full of infantile malice. Truly I was a vicious little beast. I was a little piece of untrained Nature. And I am unable to judge which is the more savagely forlorn: the starved-hearted child, or the woman, young and all alone. The little wild stubborn child felt things and wanted things. She did not know that she felt things and wanted things. Now I feel and I want things and I know it with burning vividness. The little vicious Mary MacLane suffered, but she did not know that she suffered. Yet that did not make the suffering less. And she reached out with a little sunburned hand to touch and take something. But the sunburned little hand remained empty. There was nothing for it. No one had anything to put into it. The little wild creature wanted to be loved; she wanted something to put in her hungry little heart. But no one had anything to put into a hungry little heart. No one said “dear.” The little vicious child was the only MacLane, and she felt somewhat alone. But there, after all, were the lizards and the little garter snakes. The wretched, hardened little piece of untrained Nature has grown and developed into a woman, young and alone. For the child there was a Nothingness, and for the woman there is a great Nothingness. Perhaps the Devil will bring me something in my lonely womanhood to put in my wooden heart. But the time when I was a child will never come again. It is gone--gone. I may live through some long, long years, but nothing like it will ever come. For there is nothing like it. It is a life by itself. It has naught to do with philosophy, or with genius, or with heights and depths, or with the red sunset sky, or with the Devil. These come later.