“There’s many a slip
’Twixt the cup and the lip,”
and although she laughed it away and said there was no sense in the answer, subsequent events showed that I probably hit the nail on the head. Much later I learned that a real tragedy for her was going on at that very time. And there was that poor girl depending on such flimsy help as this for solution of her difficulties! I tremble when I think what indirect harm such practices may work—palmistry, and other occult things—with impressionable, uncritical minds, swayed powerfully by the hit-and-miss guesses of these worthless oracles.
This craze continued all one winter. It was great fun, but I wearied of it after a while. And what makes me know that I was more than vaguely conscious of my own deception is that on “experiencing religion” I changed so in my feelings about the pastime. After that, when planchette-writing was proposed, I recoiled from it, refusing or evading requests for the experiments, and somehow finally managed to put a quietus on the career of the little instrument. I think I even appeared to comply with their requests occasionally, but did not will the thing to write, and, several failures dampening the interest, the thing was dropped—Planchette was again relegated to the upstairs closet. For years I never came upon the little heart-shaped affair without a feeling almost of nausea at the part I had taken in the mysterious writing. Thereafter it was painful to hear others recounting, in good faith, the wonderful things it had done.
Harmless as were these pastimes on the whole, it is in their deeper significance that the gravity lies. They betray innate and grave faults of character—a capacity for artful duplicity which grew by what it fed upon, each triumph leading to other, more elaborate experiments. How it would pain my parents to learn that I had been such a gay deceiver when they thought me a demure little mouse! The experience has shown me how easy it is, too, to delude one’s self, as well as to dupe others. I can see how “mediums,” and all who deal in occult matters, may evolve into veritable frauds, though starting out in the utmost good faith.
For some years after most of the girls wore bangs or curled their hair I resolutely refused to do it, on the ground that it was artificial. Though longing for wavy hair falling softly over my high forehead, I would not curl it—it was false, the whole idea was wrong; Nature had denied me natural curls, and I would suffer the sight of my plain face in the glass rather than employ artificial means to relieve its plainness. But—when about seventeen, I did begin to curl my hair, my awakening feminine instincts, I suppose, getting the better of my principles, such as they were. I disapproved of artificial flowers, and for years would not wear them on my hats; but there came a time when I weakened in this, though the flowers must be of the best—the most natural-looking to be had.
I can see now a significance back of these seemingly trivial things: they reveal an unenviable complexity of nature. In first one thing, then another, I have stood out against conforming to customs, if my own ideas of right and wrong prohibited me, but alas! so often has come the ultimate defeat—concessions to conventions, customs, overpowering circumstances, or instincts. And, when finally yielding to that so long withstood, I have pursued the opposite course with an almost equal determination to make a success of the counterfeit; to give, as far as possible, an impression of genuineness. If I curled my hair, the curls must be as natural as possible. And the same principle has been carried into less trivial matters. A legitimate outlet for my ingrained mimetic and dramatic tendency would have been the stage.
When as a child I had sat on my father’s lap and coaxed him to tell me where I came from, I had no idea of the correct answer to my question. Though I do not remember how he answered me, I think I may have persisted in my query because I was beginning to see the inconsistencies and absurdities of the stories told me, but this is purely conjecture. I remember the older schoolgirls telling me strange, incredible things for a time, then later, one dreadful day, explaining more correctly the real origin of babies. Shocked and horrified by their talk, I opposed a prompt and stout rejection. It wasn’t so, I knew it wasn’t so. Laughing at me, they adduced further proof. I tried to pull away and get out of the room as I hotly declared, “It isn’t so, I know my father and mother never——” and I choked with indignation. They evidently enjoyed the torture they were inflicting. I was like a hunted hare, and half my fright was doubtless due to the growing conviction that it might be true. One girl pulled me back as I tried to escape; then braced herself against the door while I faced her in impotent rage and shame. And another informer taunted, “Little Fool! you wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t true—your father and mother ain’t any better than anyone else’s.”
This was such a bitter experience that I have always felt strongly the need of early satisfying these inevitable queries of children by true, if partial, explanations, thus forestalling their enlightenment in the brutal way it came to me, associated with impure, repelling interpretations.
For some months preceding the time of passing from girlhood to womanhood, I stayed with Cousin Prudence, helping her with the housework, and going to school from there. Fond of her, I was, too, more docile in learning from her than I was at home. She was a married old maid. “Prunes and prisms” was her watchword. Her house was in order from top to bottom; she could tell on just what shelf, in which box, in which corner of said box, a given article lay; and whoever helped her had to observe a like care. She was not at all well and did almost nothing but to help with the baking. I pitied her, and she managed to get a lot of work out of me for this reason, and also because she had tact, and convinced me of the vital importance of attending thoroughly to the infinite details of housekeeping. From her throne on the couch she would issue gentle commands and endless queries, and she had an uncanny way of ascertaining if I slighted anything. But in justice I must say I was conscientious in carrying out her exacting requirements.