Perhaps I may be pardoned a word devoted to my appearance in those days.  I have been told that I was a plump little girl, with very fair skin, rosy cheeks, good features, dark-brown hair, and laughing blue eyes.  A student in my father’s office, the late Henry Bayard of Delaware (an uncle of our recent Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s, Thomas F. Bayard), told me one day, after conning my features carefully, that I had one defect which he could remedy.  “Your eyebrows should be darker and heavier,” said he, “and if you will let me shave them once or twice, you will be much improved.”  I consented, and, slight as my eyebrows were, they seemed to have had some expression, for the loss of them had a most singular effect on my appearance.  Everybody, including even the operator, laughed at my odd-looking face, and I was in the depths of humiliation during the period while my eyebrows were growing out again.  It is scarcely necessary for me to add that I never allowed the young man to repeat the experiment, although strongly urged to do so.

I cannot recall how or when I conquered the alphabet, words in three letters, the multiplication table, the points of the compass, the chicken pox, whooping cough, measles, and scarlet fever.  All these unhappy incidents of childhood left but little impression on my mind.  I have, however, most pleasant memories of the good spinster, Maria Yost, who patiently taught three generations of children the rudiments of the English language, and introduced us to the pictures in “Murray’s Spelling-book,” where Old Father Time, with his scythe, and the farmer stoning the boys in his apple trees, gave rise in my mind to many serious reflections.  Miss Yost was plump and rosy, with fair hair, and had a merry twinkle in her blue eyes, and she took us by very easy stages through the old-fashioned school-books.  The interesting Readers children now have were unknown sixty years ago.  We did not reach the temple of knowledge by the flowery paths of ease in which our descendants now walk.

I still have a perfect vision of myself and sisters, as we stood up in the classes, with our toes at the cracks in the floor, all dressed alike in bright red flannel, black alpaca aprons, and, around the neck, a starched ruffle that, through a lack of skill on the part of either the laundress or the nurse who sewed them in, proved a constant source of discomfort to us.  I have since seen full-grown men, under slighter provocation than we endured, jerk off a collar, tear it in two, and throw it to the winds, chased by the most soul-harrowing expletives.  But we were sternly rebuked for complaining, and if we ventured to introduce our little fingers between the delicate skin and the irritating linen, our hands were slapped and the ruffle readjusted a degree closer.  Our Sunday dresses were relieved with a black sprig and white aprons.  We had red cloaks, red hoods, red mittens, and red stockings.  For one’s self to be all in red six months of the year was bad enough,