it for a hint or not — my propensity for dis- 

 carding tiresome tasks was rather well known 

 in the family — at any rate, she told me that 

 in her impulsiveness she often used to throw 

 a thing aside to start something fresh, and her 

 mother gathered together all such attempts 

 and quietly put them in a drawer and one day 

 said to her, "You may not begin anything else 

 until you finish all these bits of fancy work 

 that you have started." Aunt Luola said she 

 wept miuch over the task, but she learned her 

 lesson. Never again did she let any bit of 

 work leave her hands unfinished. That 

 taught me also a lesson — never to abandon a 

 purpose until it has been accomplished. 



My aunt possessed a wonderful power. It 

 was som.ething more than personality; it was 

 what Emerson alludes to as a sense of mass 

 and defines as character, nam.ing its chief 

 manifestation self-sufficingness. My own at- 

 titude toward her reminds me again of Emer- 

 son's eulogy, "I revere her who is riches; so 

 that I cannot think of her as alone or poor or 

 exiled or unhappy or a client, but a perpetual 

 patron, benefactor, beatified woman." Such 

 qualities as furnished her especial genius 

 might have been embodied in a great re- 

 former or a statesman or a general, but in her 

 they blended into one great simple expres- 

 sion, and with Abou Ben Adhem she might 

 have said, "Write me as one who loves his 

 fellow-men." 



24 



