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One of the earliest and most painful recollections of my youth is associated with hair. I still tingle warmly when I think of it. I should say I was about eight years old at the time. My mother sent me down the street to the barber’s to have my hair trimmed–shingled was the term then used. Some of my private collection of cowlicks had begun to stand up in a way that invited adverse criticism and reminded people of sunbursts. They made me look as though my hair were trying to pull itself out by the roots and escape. So I was sent to the barber’s. My little cousin, two years younger, went along in my charge. It was thought that the performance might entertain her. I was mounted in a chair and had a cloth tucked in round my neck, like a self-made millionaire about to eat consomme. The officiating barber got out a shiny steel instrument with jaws–the first pair of clippers I had ever seen–and he ran this up the back of my neck, producing a most agreeable feeling. He reached the top of my head and would have paused but I told him to go right ahead and clip me close all over, which he did. When he had finished the job I was so delighted with the sensation and with the attendant result as viewed in a mirror that I suggested he might give my little cousin a similar treat. From a mere child I was ever so–willing always to share my simple pleasures with those about me, especially where it entailed no inconvenience on my part. I told him my father would pay the bill for both of us when he came by that night.

The barber fell in with the suggestion. It has ever been my experience that a barber will fall in readily with any suggestion whereby the barber is going to get something out of it for himself. In this instance he was going to get another quarter, and a quarter went farther in those days than it does now. I dismounted from the chair and my innocent little cousin was installed in my place. As I now recall she made no protest. The barber ran his clippers conscientiously and painstakingly over her tender young scalp, while I stood admiringly by and watched the long yellow curls fall writhing upon the floor at my feet. It seemed to me that a great and manifest improvement was produced in her general appearance. Instead of being hampered by those silly curls dangling down all round her face, she now had a round, slick, smooth dome decorated with a stiff yellowish stubble, and the skin showed through nice and pink and the ears were well displayed, whereas before they had been practically hidden. She was also relieved of those foolish bangs hanging down in her eyes. This, I should have stated, occurred in the period when womankind of whatsoever age and also some men wore bangs, a disease from which all have since recovered with the exception of racehorses and princesses of the various reigning houses of Europe. And now my little cousin was shut of those annoying bangs, and her forehead ran up so high that you had to go round behind her to see where it left off.

Filled with a joyous sense of achievement and conscious of a kindly deed worthily performed, I took my little cousin by her hand and led her home.

My mother was waiting for us at the front door. She seemed surprised when I took off my hat and gave her a look, but that wasn’t a circumstance to her surprise when I proudly took off my little cousin’s cap. She uttered a kind of a strangled cry and my cousin’s mother came running, and the way she carried on was scandalous and ill-timed. I will draw a veil over the proceedings of the next few minutes. At the time it would have been a source of great personal gratification and comfort to me if I could have drawn a number of veils, good, thick, woolen ones, over the proceedings. My mother wept, my aunt wept, my little cousin wept, and I am not ashamed to state that I wept quite copiously myself. But I had more provocation to weep than any of them.