I won’t attempt to write my memoirs, but just jot down a few odds and ends before they slip my memory.
Memory is an excellent institution, and often assertive until one begins to write. Then nasty little doubts have a way of creeping in, doubts about dates, spelling of names, the actual perpetrator of a certain cute act, or the inception of a particular thought. Each year fills memory’s slate more full, and the older markings become gradually obliterated as new pencillings take their place.
Poor old slate, let me see if I cannot decipher a few stray remembrances before they are all rubbed out—and recall how I began to write.
Thirteen years.
What does the title mean? It does not refer to a prison sentence, to supposed ill-luck as a fateful sign which a modern club of thirteen members is said to have put to the test, nor to anything romantic. Like Nansen, I am not superstitious. He was the head of twelve men on his Polar expedition, and his was the most successful one ever carried through, for he never lost a man. They started a party of thirteen and they returned a party of thirteen—an antidote to the superstition originated by the treachery of Judas.
Thirteen years is a large lease of existence during which to hire one’s self out a bond-slave. But that is what I did—perforce. Necessity is a hard taskmaster; and necessity plied the lash.
A great deal of water runs in thirteen years; water that turns the mill-wheel to grind us mortals to finer—perchance more useful—issues. The various incidents in my busy life during those years of toil all doubtless had their effect on character and my outlook on the world. “Nobody simply sees; nobody simply meets, and doing, simply does this and that. Inevitably in seeing, meeting, and doing there is a certain shaping of the mind and spirit of the person principally concerned.” So Richard Whiteing wisely remarked, speaking of this—my hardest stage of life’s journey.
Certainly my outlook on the world has altered since the days of happy, careless childhood, of joyous youth as girl and bride. How I resented constraint at fifteen and appreciated it later. How the restlessness of my teens mellowed and sobered and ripened.
Although I did not experience it myself, I am sure that adversity is a fine up-bringing for youth. It makes children think, which youth nursed in luxury seldom does. Adversity only came to me in my twenties.
Youth is often spent courting time,