“Minerva’s silver sandals still
     Are loosed and not effete.”

You note it is not a shade above the thing which all human beings churn out in their youth.

You would not think that in a little wee primer—­for that is what the Autobiography is—­a person with a tumultuous career of seventy years behind her could find room for two or three pages of padding of this kind, but such is the case.  She evidently puts narrative together with difficulty and is not at home in it, and is glad to have something ready-made to fill in with.  Another sample: 

     “Here fame-honored Hickory rears his bold form,
     And bears a brave breast to the lightning and storm,
     While Palm, Bay, and Laurel in classical glee,
     Chase Tulip, Magnolia, and fragrant Fringe-tree.”

Vivid?  You can fairly see those trees galloping around.  That she could still treasure up, and print, and manifestly admire those Poems, indicates that the most daring and masculine and masterful woman that has appeared in the earth in centuries has the same soft, girly-girly places in her that the rest of us have.

When it comes to selecting her ancestors she is still human, natural, vain, commonplace—­as commonplace as I am myself when I am sorting ancestors for my autobiography.  She combs out some creditable Scots, and labels them and sets them aside for use, not overlooking the one to whom Sir William Wallace gave “a heavy sword encased in a brass scabbard,” and naively explaining which Sir William Wallace it was, lest we get the wrong one by the hassock; this is the one “from whose patriotism and bravery comes that heart-stirring air, ‘Scots wha hae wi’ Wallace bled.’” Hannah More was related to her ancestors.  She explains who Hannah More was.

Whenever a person informs us who Sir William Wallace was, or who wrote “Hamlet,” or where the Declaration of Independence was fought, it fills us with a suspicion wellnigh amounting to conviction, that that person would not suspect us of being so empty of knowledge if he wasn’t suffering from the same “claim” himself.  Then we turn to page 20 of the Autobiography and happen upon this passage, and that hasty suspicion stands rebuked: 

“I gained book-knowledge with far less labor than is usually requisite.  At ten years of age I was as familiar with Lindley Murray’s Grammar as with the Westminster Catechism; and the latter I had to repeat every Sunday.  My favorite studies were Natural Philosophy, Logic, and Moral Science.  From my brother Albert I received lessons in the ancient tongues, Hebrew, Greek, and Latin.”

You catch your breath in astonishment, and feel again and still again the pang of that rebuke.  But then your eye falls upon the next sentence but one, and the pain passes away and you set up the suspicion again with evil satisfaction: 

“After my discovery of Christian Science, most of the knowledge I had gleaned from school-books vanished like a dream.”