Personally, although nothing has ever tempted me to marry a second
time, I am very glad I married in my early youth, not only because
matrimony enables a potential writer to see life from many more
viewpoints than if she remains blissfully single, but because I was
sheltered from all harsh contacts with the world. No one was ever less
equipped by nature for domesticity and all the responsibilities of
everyday life, and if circumstances had so ordered that I had not
blundered into matrimony before twenty-four-or-five, no doubt I never
should have married at all.

But at that time--I was home on a vacation from boarding-school, and
had had none of that illuminating experience known as being "out," I
did no reasoning whatever. On the other hand I was far too mentally
undeveloped and arrogant to be capable at that tender age of falling
deeply in love. My future husband proposed six times (we were in a
country house). I was flattered, divided between the ambition to
graduate brilliantly and to be an author with no further loss of time,
and wear becoming caps and trains to my frocks. On the other hand I
wanted neither a husband particularly nor to go back to school, for I
felt that as my grandfather had one of the best libraries in
California nothing could be more pleasant or profitable than to finish
my education in it undisturbed. Nevertheless, quite abruptly I made up
my mind and married; and, if the truth were known, my reasons and
impulses were probably as intelligent as those of the average young
girl who knows the world only through books and thinks it has little
more to teach her. My life had been objective and sheltered. If forced
to earn my living at sixteen no doubt the contacts impossible to
escape would soon have given me a real maturity of judgment and I
should have grown to love, jealously, my freedom.

That is to say, if I had been a strong girl. As a matter-of-fact I was
extremely delicate, with a weak back, a threat of tuberculosis, and
very bad eyes. Most of this was the result of over-study, for I had
been a healthy child, but I loved books and was indifferent to
exercise and nourishment. No doubt if I had been turned out into the
world to fare for myself I should have gone into a decline. Therefore,
it was sheer luck that betrayed me into matrimony, for although my
mental energies were torpid for several years my first child seemed to
dissipate the shadows that lay in my blood, and at twenty-five I was