"LET US HELP EACH OTHER"
In the following September I took my daughters to Elizabeth. She looked earnestly, first at Frances, tall and slim and fancying herself a woman grown, then at Ellen, short and round and struggling with the giggling age. "We shall like each other, I'm sure," was her verdict. "We'll get on well together." And Frances smiled, and Ellen nodded. They evidently thought so, too.
"I want you to teach them your art," said I, when they were gone to settle themselves and she and I were alone.
"My art?"
"The art of being one's self. I am sick of men and women who hide their real selves behind a pose of what they want others to think them."
"Most of our troubles come from that, don't they?"
"All mine did," said I. "I am at the age when the very word age begins to jar on the ear, and the net result of my years of effort is—I have convinced other people that I am somebody at the cost of convincing myself that I am nobody."
"No, you are master," she said.
"As a lion-tamer is master of his lions. He gives all his thought to them, who think only of their appetites. And his whole reward is that with his life in his hand he can sometimes cow them through a few worthless little tricks." I looked round the attractive reception-room of the school. "I wish you'd take me in, too," I ended.
She flushed a little, then shook her head, her eyes twinkling. "This is not a reformatory," said she. And we both laughed.