In thinking back over my first decade, I realize that my best teachers were my father, my mother, and my sister Julia. One of my early memories is of an evening when I was allowed to sit up to see Julia dressed for a party. She wore a white tarletan dress; Madame Canagalli, the Italian hairdresser, and my mother had a discussion as to which camellia they should place in her beautiful black hair, fine as a baby’s and softer than any other! I remember noticing that the white camellia was the same color as her smooth forehead “that looked like marble and smelt like myrrh”, that the red camellia matched the color in her cheeks and lips. This is the first impression I have of personal beauty. The vision persists, clear-cut as it was that night, when I first realized that some people are better to look at than others. Julia read me all the Waverley novels and all of Dickens. I have often read them since, but that first impression remains the strongest. Julia, who introduced me to this company, was the intimate of my childhood, but I remember a curious withdrawal the moment my feet touched the threshold of girlhood. She had been the beneficient and adored elder sister of my childhood, but when I braided my tawny mane and “put up” my hair like a big girl, I lost something that had been an intrinsic part of our comradeship. I understand it all now, I could not then. In the evening my father read us the poems of Byron, Scott, and Macaulay. He had a fine voice and read--recited rather, for he knew them by heart--many a stirring poem in the hour of rest he allowed himself after the evening meal. I can hear his voice now, reciting a line he always gave with great spirit: “Roderick Vich Alpin Dhu, ho ieroe!” While my father was teaching me to love poetry, my mother was teaching me to love good music. At dusk we gathered around the Chickering grand piano, while Mama sang to us. She had a beautiful, cultivated voice, and the flexible hands of the trained pianist, which she kept to the end of her life. Her repertoire was immense; she sang the florid arias of Bellini, the grand recitatives of Handel, folk-songs of France and Italy, Scotch and English ballads, German _lieder_, plantation melodies. We all joined in the chorus of these polyglot songs,--Irish, Polish, and Russian!