PROLOGUE. 



ix 



were cultivated things in gardens, petunias, mullein 

 pinks, candytuft and the like. 



Presently she went to college and was confronted 

 by heights and depths of learning ; but still there was 

 something lacking. She studied Zoology, and found 

 that birds were classified by their toes. That dis- 

 gusted her with the whole subject. She cared no more 

 about the anatomy of birds than she did about the 

 skeletons of her friends. What she wanted was to 

 associate with them as living beings ; to know them as 

 * 6 folks/' The creature that most impressed her in 

 Zoology was the amphioxus ; but she has never met an 

 amphioxus in real life any more than she has met an 

 asymptote, another uncanny thing that she was study- 

 ing about under another erudite professor. Of course 

 she learned heaps and heaps of things at Vassar; 

 among them that a north room is not only cooler in 

 winter, but warmer in summer than a south room; 

 also, that spring-beauties grow in the neighborhood of 

 the Hudson and Mayflowers do not, while the reverse 

 is true of Concord ; also, that fried oysters and olives 

 are good to eat at midnight or any other hour. She 

 also got a mental discipline that reconstructed the 

 world for her, but she had no time to live with the 

 birds and flowers. 



