aware that some human beings even thought it a crime. I was not for a
moment daunted,--although, of course, there were some days of secret
tears--rather I was spurred to tireless effort. If they beat me at
anything, I was grimly determined to make them sweat for it! Once I
remember challenging a great, hard farmer-boy to battle, when I knew he
could whip me; and he did. But ever after, he was polite.

As time flew I felt not so much disowned and rejected as rather drawn up
into higher spaces and made part of a mightier mission. At times I
almost pitied my pale companions, who were not of the Lord's anointed
and who saw in their dreams no splendid quests of golden fleeces.

Even in the matter of girls my peculiar phantasy asserted itself.
Naturally, it was in our town voted bad form for boys of twelve and
fourteen to show any evident weakness for girls. We tolerated them
loftily, and now and then they played in our games, when I joined in
quite as naturally as the rest. It was when strangers came, or summer
boarders, or when the oldest girls grew up that my sharp senses noted
little hesitancies in public and searchings for possible public opinion.
Then I flamed! I lifted my chin and strode off to the mountains, where I
viewed the world at my feet and strained my eyes across the shadow of
the hills.

I was graduated from high school at sixteen, and I talked of "Wendell
Phillips." This was my first sweet taste of the world's applause. There
were flowers and upturned faces, music and marching, and there was my
mother's smile. She was lame, then, and a bit drawn, but very happy. It
was her great day and that very year she lay down with a sigh of content
and has not yet awakened. I felt a certain gladness to see her, at last,
at peace, for she had worried all her life. Of my own loss I had then