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“They led me forth to a pasture, shortly after our arrival at the farm, and, catching a horse, they hoisted me up on to its bare, slippery back. I have learned a good bit about horses since then,” she says, “have hired, borrowed and bought them, but never since have I seen a horse of such appalling aspect. His eyes were the size of soup-plates, large clouds of smoke came from his nostrils. He had a glass-enamelled surface, and if he was half as tall as he felt, some museum manager missed a fortune. Then the young fiends, leaving me on my slippery perch, high up near the sky, drew afar off and stood against the fence, and gave me plenty of room to fall off. But when I suddenly felt the world heave up beneath me, I uttered a wild shriek–clenched my hands in the animal’s black hair and, madly flinging propriety to any point of the compass that happened to be behind me, I cast one pantalette over the enameled back, and thus astride safely crossed the pasture–and lo, it was not I who fell, but their faces instead! When they came to take me down somehow the animal seemed shrunken, and I hesitated about leaving it, whereupon the biggest boy said I had ‘pluck.’ I had been frightened nearly to death, but I always could be silent at the proper moment; I was silent then, and he would teach me to ride sideways, for my mother would surely punish me if I sat astride like that. In a few weeks, thanks to him, I was the one who was oftenest trusted to take the horses to water at noon, riding sideways and always bare-back, mounted on one horse and leading a second to the creek, until all had had their drink. Which habit of riding–from balance–” the young person adds, “has made me quite independent of stirrups since those far-away days.”

Besides the riding, there were many other delightful pastimes which were a part of life on the farm, and on rainy days, when the children could not play out of doors, they would flock to the big barn, and listen eagerly to stories told by the city girl, who had read them in books. Two precious years passed all too swiftly on the farm, and the young person was fast shooting up into a tall, slender girl, who had learned a love of nature in all its forms, which never left her. She had also grown stronger, which satisfied her mother that the experiment had been successful. But now there was education to be thought of, and when news came of the death of that father, who had been the haunting specter of the mother’s life, they went back at once to Cleveland, where the mother obtained employment, and the growing daughter was sent to a public school. But at best it gave a meager course of study to one who had always been a reader of every book on which she could lay her hands. To make the dreary, daily routine less tiresome, she supplemented it by a series of “thinks.” These usually took place at night after her candle had been blown out, and the young person generally fell asleep in a white robe and a crown of flowers, before she had gathered up all the prizes and diplomas and things she had earned in the world of reverie, where her dream self had been roving.

And now came the approach of her thirteenth birthday, and her plea that she might be made more useful in the world. And then, came this:

In the boarding-house where she and her mother were living, the mother acting as assistant to the manager, the young person occupied with enduring her monotonous existence and with watching the boarders, there were two actresses, a mother and daughter. The daughter, whose name was Blanche, was only a year or two older than the young person whose eyes followed her so eagerly, because Blanche was one of those marvelous creatures whose real life was lived behind the foot-lights.