At six I had decided upon my husband. Jack was his name; he was a beautiful boy, fair, blue eyes, delicate and poetic looking. He was mentally my superior, he loved poetry and wrote good verses. He read a great deal and talked well. He loved me and I loved him, yet there was no demonstration of it in embraces. We played together constantly, and we spoke of the time when we might marry. His great desire was to have a colored child with light hair and blue eyes for a daughter, and we had agreed upon it. All of our plans were spoken about before our parents, there was no effort made to hide our attachment. I was by nature rough and a great fighter, Jack was calm and serious, and at times I fought his battles for him. I was maternal towards him. His mother died during our friendship, and I tried to take her place. It was a pure love, nothing cheap or silly. He was killed in the Iroquois Fire and my life was dreary for a long time. I remember the hopeless feeling I experienced when I heard the news. I did not weep, I turned to my mother and said, “I don’t want to live any longer.” We had always been allowed to sit across from each other at school, and after Jack’s death, I was granted permission to keep his seat vacant for the rest of the year, and I kept a plant on the desk which I tended daily as a memorial to my friend. ... In college, a coeducational school, I was not allowed to remain ignorant long. I was young and healthy and a real _Bachfisch_ in my enthusiastic belief in goodness. I was fortunate in having a level-headed senior for my best friend. She saw an upper classman [girl] falling in love with me, and she came to me with the news. Then she saw how innocent I was and how ignorant, and my sex education was begun. She told me of marriage, of mistresses, of homosexuality. I was sick with so much body thrown at me at once, and to add to the unpleasantness some one introduced me to Whitman’s poetry. I got the idea that sex meant pain for women, and I determined never to marry.