A great deal of water runs in thirteen years; water that turns the mill-wheel to grind us mortals to finer—perchance more useful—issues. The various incidents in my busy life during those years of toil all doubtless had their effect on character and my outlook on the world. “Nobody simply sees; nobody simply meets, and doing, simply does this and that. Inevitably in seeing, meeting, and doing there is a certain shaping of the mind and spirit of the person principally concerned.” So Richard Whiteing wisely remarked, speaking of this—my hardest stage of life’s journey. Certainly my outlook on the world has altered since the days of happy, careless childhood, of joyous youth as girl and bride. How I resented constraint at fifteen and appreciated it later. How the restlessness of my teens mellowed and sobered and ripened. Although I did not experience it myself, I am sure that adversity is a fine up-bringing for youth. It makes children think, which youth nursed in luxury seldom does. Adversity only came to me in my twenties. Youth is often spent courting time, Middle age in chasing time, Old age, alas, in killing time. Reared in a soil of generous sufficiency, nourished by wisdom and kindness in the warm sunshine of love, instead of the human plant being blighted when the winds blew and the rains fell, it grew stronger and blossomed and bore the fruit of work. “Oh, poor So-and-so was not brought up to work,” people often say despondingly when bad times overtake their friends; “theirs was such a happy home.” But surely the home should be happy. At least, let there be something of gladness to look back on, when one is struggling uphill under a heavy load. The influence of parents is incalculable in effect on children. The example of my father was powerful in helping me to take up my burden as he had done his. If these pages, put together after thirteen years of constant work, seem too scrappy—disconnected even—let me ask the sympathy of those who know what it is to be interrupted again and again by illness in the midst of a task. Illness that has laid me on my sofa, in bed, even sent me to a “cure” in search of health, as often as six times in eighteen months; that makes the grasshopper a burden. Without friendship and sympathy courage would have failed to go on struggling with what seemed a veritable burden, and yet when well, how little I thought of toil and stress when writing more important books. The offer of a friend to undertake a little of the drudgery of the task seemed to lift tons’ weight off my head. Still, though other hands may pull a sofa and shake pillows into place, the invalid’s direction is needful or her own room would not have her own individuality, and would lose the personal touch that gives the clue. Ups and downs will come. Bolts will fall from the blue. The unexpected is what always happens.