orld--a great voice, a voice with which
I could make audiences cry or laugh at my will. And, strangely enough,
from that time my girlish voice began to grow stronger and stronger,
until I could proudly make more noise with it than any other girl in
school. Then it grew louder and higher, until it was impossible to
ignore such a big possession any longer, and the family decreed that I
must have singing lessons.

I took lessons accordingly from an excellent local teacher, practised
scales and exercises and later studied the classic songs and arias as
seriously as I could, but it was so fatally easy to be interrupted. We
were all out of school for the first time and enjoying our freedom. It
was so much more chic to go down to Huyler's in the mornings, when the
girls only a year younger were hard at their lessons, than in the
afternoon when the whole girl world was at liberty. I would just begin a
morning's work when some one would call me on the telephone to go to the
dressmaker's with her, or help arrange the flowers for a dinner party. I
loved both flowers and dresses, and it was easy to think, "Oh! I'll
practise this afternoon!" and fly off to be gone all day. In the evening
there was my fiance who had to tell me all the absorbing details of his
office, or there was a dance, or a theatre party, and I took everything
that came my way and enjoyed it all equally. But all the time my voice
was really first in my thoughts, and I longed to study seriously and
intensely, to arrange my whole life for it and its proper development.

The family, it seemed to me, was more interested in my trousseau than in
anything else. They had scraped together five hundred dollars, and I was
to have it all, incredible as it sounded, to buy clothes with.
Subconsciously all day, and compellingly in bed at night, the thought of
what I could do for my voice with that five hundred dollars was with me.
I saw myself only as a singer, and knew that I could never be happy
unless I were allowed first to get my instrument in thorough working
order and then to use it. The phrases, "working out your own salvation,"
"fulfilling your own destiny," "the necessity of self-development," and
all those other nicely turned expressions which most students have at
their tongues' end, were unknown to me. I just _felt_, inarticulately.
But my feeling was strong enough to carry me into action, the step which
phrasemakers, who find complete satisfaction in their phrases,