would be the acme of happiness; to have no one to question my actions, to be responsible only to myself would be the koryphe of freedom. Yet this year, when I was free to go and come as I pleased, and had no one to whom I had to give any account of my actions, I found to be the most desolate of my life, and my freedom weighed on me far more than ever restraint had at home. I came to realize that though an individual I was part of a whole, and must remain a part of that whole in order to enjoy life.
That year humanized me, so to speak, and made me understand the reason for much that I used to laugh at before—such, for example, as the spinster's devotion to her rector, to settlement work, or even to a parrot, a cat, or a dog. Whenever now I see a woman in a carriage with a dog on her lap, I may join with those who laugh at her; but at the same time I wonder if it may not be poverty and loneliness of life which make that woman, rich in money, lavish the treasures of her heart on a dumb creature.
At the end of the year I returned to the school, and willingly placed myself again in harness. During this year I made the acquaintance of John Fisk's books, and discovered the error of my preconceived notions about the American people and their origin. He taught me who the early settlers really were, whence, and why they had come. I read of their privations and
