| "When she was good she was very, very good, |
| And when she was bad she was horrid." |
I fear, at times, I was very, very horrid. But I planned a danger signal! One day I came home with a pair of most distinctive black-and-white checked stockings, the most hideous things one can imagine.
"Mother," I said, "when I wear these stockings I want to be let alone."
Thus it was an understood thing that no one should speak to me or notice me in the least while these horrors adorned me. Perhaps after a few hours, or a day, I would go up the back stairs, change my stockings—and the sun would shine again.
It was at this time that I was the victim of an accident which resulted in a neat bit of surgery. My mother and I were spending a summer in the little village of Sandwich, New Hampshire. I was crazy to carve a small horse out of wood, and went down to the woodshed in the rear of the country house where we were staying, armed with a hatchet and followed by an admiring youngster from the village. The hatchet was very sharp. My experience in carving wooden horses was limited. Suddenly the hatchet came down and clipped a tiny bit off the extreme ends of my left thumb and forefinger.
I screamed with agony and cried in amazement as the poor little bleeding tips of my fingers fell to the floor, but the country boy, with wonderful presence of mind, picked them up, and keeping them warm in his closed hand, ran with me at full speed to the nearest doctor. Fortunately, he happened to be at home. When the village boy showed him the wounded hand and the tiny bleeding bits of finger, he clamped them instantly on the fingers where they belonged, put on ointments, and bound them tight with bandages. This marvelous surgery, without a stitch being taken, actually was successful; the fingers healed, and now only a slight scar remains.
I regret to say that this physician, whose presence of mind thus saved my fingers from being permanently mutilated, is entirely unknown to me now. Some few years ago, in Boston, I told this story in an interview, and a physician wrote me from some other city that he was the man who had saved my fingers for me. I wrote and thanked him for his kindness toward a little girl; but his letter was mislaid and destroyed, so that even now I do not know his name. Wherever he is, however, he will always have my thanks and warmest admiration.
Finally, the time came for me to enter the Melrose High School. I objected seriously to the further routine of public schooling, as I wished to study only music. But both my father and mother insisted; so I began the study of languages. I was intensely interested in mythology, history, and literature, but I hated mathematics. I always preferred to count on my fingers rather than to use my brain for such merely mechanical feats as adding or multiplying figures. In the study of languages I soon found that my teachers were excellent grammarians, but I pleaded that I wanted to learn to talk and not merely to conjugate.
I took a supplementary course in literature, and well remember the most important incident when I competed for the prize. I was quite sure my essay would win. In fancy I had already rehearsed the pretty speech in which I should thank the committee for the honor conferred on me. But the prize went to some one else. My anger was sudden and hot. Then and there I made up my mind that if ever I could not be first in what I attempted, I would drop it at once. I believed my material was best and deserved the prize, and I was hurt at not conquering before an admiring and enthusiastic audience!
