concentration upon any book or paper that came under her eyes became a
family joke. She would be lost immediately, oblivious of all
surroundings. She read and thought with a lively appreciation of the
many futilities in life and a desire to make her life count. She
wasted no time on what did not at once attract her spirit, except of
necessity. And yet she genuinely delighted in the small events of a
day such as please and awe children. And the reason they loved her so
was because they knew she brought the same guileless point of view to
solve their bewilderment from larger experience. And yet she would
write:

"I _wish_ I knew where I stood. I was much happier when I was a
rigid Catholic. I wish I could fit back into that measure. Can I ever--
any more than I can fit into the mental measure of a nun?"

And again her typewriting would exclaim to me:

"I don't like to write letters to you. I like to talk to you. I like
still better to be silent with you!"

When she thought me in need of it she could be very self-forgetful:

"But I want to see the future big with Romance for you and I would
rather feel you came home from voyages two weeks or two months long,
with a trunkful of manuscripts; and that, three years from today, you
had secured us special rates on a tramp steamer to Plymouth, than that
you were going to dodge into subways the rest of your life."

"I would infinitely rather you shipped before the mast--to Bermuda,
Borneo, or Buenos Aires. Don't think from this I don't want your face