of Baltimore, a Southerner, too, by temperament May
had a brother and a sister older than herself (both were now married),
and a younger brother who had taken care that she should not be spoiled
for want of direct personal criticism. It was this younger brother, Joe,
who first called her "Towhead," and even now he often made disparaging
remarks about "girls who didn't weigh 130"--in Joe's eyes, a Venus of
Rubens would have seemed perfect. May was not vain of her looks; indeed,
she had only come to take pleasure in them of recent years. As a young
girl, comparing herself with her mother, she feared that she would
always be "quite homely." Her glass and the attentions of men had
gradually shown her the pleasant truth. She did not, however, even now,
overrate her beauty greatly. But her character had been modified
to advantage in those schoolgirl days, when, with bitter tears, she
admitted to herself that she was not pretty. Her teacher's praise of her
quickness and memory had taught her to set her pride on learning. And
indeed she had been an intelligent child, gifted with a sponge-like
faculty of assimilating all kinds of knowledge--the result, perhaps, of
generations of educated forbears. The admiration paid to her looks
did not cause her to relax her intellectual efforts. But when at the
University she found herself outgrowing the ordinary standards of
opinion, conceit at first took possession of her. It seemed to her
manifest that she had always underrated herself. She was astonished by
her own excessive modesty, and keenly interested in it. She had thought
herself ugly and she was beautiful, and now it was evident that she was
a genius as well. With soul mightily uplifted by dreams of all she would
do and the high part she would play in life, always nobly serious, yet
with condescension of exquisite charming kindliness, taking herself
gravely for a perfect product of the race and time, she proceeded to
write the book which should discover to mankind all her qualities--the
delicacy, nobility, and sweetness of an ideal nature.

During this period she even tried to treat Joe with sweet courtesy, but
Joe told her not to make herself "more of a doggoned fool" than she
was. And soon the dream began to lose its brightness. The book would not
advance, and what she wrote did not seem to her wonderful--not inspired
and fascinating as it ought to have been. Her reading had given her some
slight critical insight. She then showed