“Your mother was out walking. Much as ever she got up the long Institution steps before you came, sooner than we expected you. Your little clothes had not come home, so I wrapped you up, first along, in an old flannel petticoat of your mother’s.” If I am somewhat of a vagrant in habit and overfond of wandering, haven’t I a good warrant for it? From my first hour I was wrapped in a fragment of my mother’s garment. If her mantle cannot truthfully be said to have fallen upon me, I have at least contrived to creep under a corner of it, and it has kept me warm all my days! “You were lying in a green cardboard box in papa’s arms the first time I saw you. ‘Come and see little sister Polly,’ he called to us in the nursery.” This, from sister Laura, is corroborative evidence that I hurried into this world sooner than I was looked for, without even giving them time to get the old cradle down from the attic. On hearing of my birth, Theodore Parker rode post-haste to the Institution to see my father. Their conversation was, in substance, as follows: “Another little girl?” “So it seems.” “A fourth daughter, a fifth child! You and Julia have your hands full already. Give the baby to my wife and me; we’ll bring her up as our own, call her Theodora, and make her our heir!” “My dear fellow, you don’t know what you’re talking about!” When the proposal was repeated to my mother, she exclaimed: “Parker certainly can have no idea what it means to have a child!” What an escape! If they could have given me to any one, it would have been to this beloved friend, who longed, above all else, for a child of his own. He put this catechism daily to his wife: Question. What are you? Answer. A bear. Question. What must this bear do to be saved? Answer. Have pups. The pups, alas, never came to the poor “bear”, remembered as far more like a dove. My first home was a public institution, but I had more right to it than most of those who lived there, for the Perkins Institution was founded and built by my father, Samuel Gridley Howe.