pages might well be devoted to my ancestors, for one was a minute-man whose name is in the history I studied at school. His powder-horn hangs over the dining-room mantel, and Tippy used to shame me with it when I was afraid of rats or the dark cellarway. If I were asked to name three things which have influenced me most in arousing my ambition to overcome my faults and to do something big and really worth while in the world, I'd name my christening cup, that Pilgrim monument and the old powder-horn.
With such a heritage it is unthinkable that I should settle down to an ordinary career. Something inside of me tells me that I am destined to make my name an honored household word in many climes. I've considered doing this in several ways.
It might be well to mention here that my earliest passion was for the stage. That will explain why quotations came so trippingly from my tongue at times. I learned yards and yards of poems and Shakespeare's plays for declamation, and I'm always given one of the leading parts in the amateur theatricals at the High School or the Town Hall. My looks may have something to do with that, however. As it might seem conceited for me to describe myself as my mirror shows me, I'll just paste some newspaper clippings on this page describing different plays I've been in. Several of them speak of my dark eyes and glowing complexion, also my "wealth of nut-brown curls," and my graceful dancing.
But in my Sophomore year at High School I began to feel that literature might be my forte, even more than acting. R. B. (which initials will stand for "red brackets" until I get the ink). The reason for that feeling is that my themes in English were always marked so high that the class nicknamed me "Abou ben Ahdem."
Last summer I began a novel called "Divided," which the girls were crazy about. It was suggested by Jean Ingelow's poem by that name and is awfully sad. Really, it kept me so depressed that I found I wasn't half enjoying my vacation. I simply lived the heroine's part myself.
Now that I am a Senior, it seems to me that Journalism offers a greater field than fiction. We had a debate last term which convinced me of it. George Woodson had the affirmative, and I didn't mind being beaten because he used grandfather for one of his arguments, and said so many nice things about his editorials being epoch-making and his inspired phrases moulding public opinion, and being caught up as slogans by all parties, leading on to victory. He spoke, too, of them being quoted not only by Punch and the London Times, but by papers in France and Australia.
R. B. (I am fully determined either to write the leading novel of the century, or to own and edit a newspaper which shall be a world-power.)
The seashore was my first schoolroom. Barby taught me to write in the sand and to spell words with shells and pebbles. I learned Arithmetic by adding and subtracting such things as the sails in the harbor and the gulls feeding at ebb-tide. On stormy days when we were home-bound, I counted the times the fog-bell tolled, or in the early dark counted how often Wood End lighthouse blinked its red eye at me.
But I must get on with my story. If I am to have room in this book for all the big happenings of life, which I feel sure lie ahead of me, I cannot devote too much space to early memories, no matter how cherished. Probably in the final revision all the scenes I have lived through will be crowded into one act or chapter. I may start it in this fashion:
Time
First fifteen years of life just ended.
Place
An ancient fishing town between the sand-dunes and the sea, where artists flock every summer to paint, its chief attraction for them seeming to be its old streets and wharves, the Cape Cod people whom they call "quaint" and the Portuguese fisher-folk.
Principal characters besides myself and family, already described.
Daniel Darcy
The old Towncrier, whom I call "Uncle Darcy" and love as dearly as if he were really kin to me.
Aunt Elspeth
His wife. They are my ideal Darby and Joan.
Captain Kidd
A darling Irish terrier, half mine and half Richard's.
Richard Moreland
Who comes every summer to stay with his cousin, Mr. James Milford, in the bungalow with the Green Stairs. He has been like an own brother to me since the days when we first played pirate together, when he was "Dare-devil Dick, the Dread Destroyer," and I was "Gory George, the Menace of the Main." Barby took him under her wing then because his own mother was dead and they've been devoted to each other ever since.
This summer Richard came alone, because his father, who always spends his vacations with him, did not come back from his Paris studio as usual. He is in the trenches now, fighting with the Allies. His friends shake their heads when they speak of him, and say what a pity such a brilliantly gifted fellow should run the risk of being killed or maimed. It would be such a terrible waste. He could serve his age better with his brush than a bayonet.
But when Richard talks of him his face lights up as if he fairly worships him for being such a hero as to sacrifice his art for the cause and go in just as a private. He has said to me a dozen times, "That is why the Allies will win this war, Georgina, because men like Dad are putting it through. They are fighting with their souls as well as their bodies."
That's all Richard talks about now. He's perfectly wild to go himself. Though he's only seventeen and a half, he is six feet tall and so strong he could take a man's place. He says if they'd so much as give him a chance to drive an ambulance he'd be satisfied, but his father won't consent.
He's running his Cousin James' car this summer instead of the regular chauffeur, and keeping it in repair. Mr. Milford pays him a small salary, and (nobody knows it but me) Richard is saving every cent. He says if he can once get across the water he'll find some way to do his part. In the meantime he's digging away at his French, and Uncle Darcy's son Dan is teaching him wireless. He's so busy some days I scarcely see him. It's so different from the way it was last summer when he was at our house from morning till night.
The same jolly crowds are back this summer at the Gray Inn and the Nelson cottage, and Laura Nelson's midshipman cousin from Annapolis is here for a week. I shall not name and describe them now, but simply group them as minor characters.
Laura says, however, that she feels sure that the midshipman is destined to be anything but a minor character in my life. She prophecies he will be leading man in a very short while. That is so silly in Laura, although, of course, she couldn't know just how silly, because I've never explained to her that I am dedicated to a Career.
I have not said positively that I shall never marry, and sometimes I think I might be happier to have a home and about four beautiful and interesting children; that is, if it could be managed without interfering with my one great ambition in life. But positively, that must come first, no matter what the cost. Only thus can I reach the high goal I have set for myself and write mine as "one of the few, the immortal names that were not born to die."
CHAPTER II
THE MISUNDERSTOOD 'TEENS
"O for a lodge in some vast wilderness" where I could write without anybody butting in to ask what I'm doing! I suppose it's the penalty I must pay now for having been such a vain little peacock in the beginning. Because father praised my first letters when I was learning to write, I passed them over to the family for more praise before sealing them. Now they've grown to feel that it is their right to read them, and to expect it as a matter of course.
It is the same way with all
