mystery 



The Days of a Man [:i86o 



from the village schoolhouse, I saw flames bursting 

 through the windows of the "Female Seminary." 

 Shrieking "The Seminary is on fire!" I gathered 

 up my books and made for home, a terrified 

 youngster. 

 Timidity Nevertheless, while I have always been more or 

 ^^'^ ^ less immune to fear as ordinarily understood, I have 

 at times felt ashamed of my inability to make quick 

 decisions in an emergency. Moreover, as a child 

 I was rather shy away from home and in the presence 

 of strangers. For instance, I still recall a bewilder- 

 ing timidity whenever I went to Warsaw, Castile, 

 Hermitage, and Perry, noisy towns where nobody 

 knew me; and it took a long time to outgrow that 

 sense of being a helpless stranger in those unac- 

 customed places. I also felt an awed sense of mystery 

 whenever 1 drove with my father along the brink of 

 what we called "the Gulf," later known as Rock 

 Glen — a narrow, dark chasm with vertical walls 

 about two hundred feet high, through which the 

 infant Oatka^ River has cut its way for a couple of 

 miles down to the valley of Warsaw. But when I 

 came back from college ten years later, the town 

 seemed very small, the hills not so high as they 

 formerly were, and the distances absurdly short. 

 Recently even Wyoming County (twenty-four miles 

 square) seemed of trivial dimensions when I motored 

 over it in a day. 



* Pronounced 0-at'ka. 



C i8 3 



