Page:In the dozy hours, and other papers.djvu/194

 180 self to vigorous reproaches from people who hold different views. I was once lured by a New York periodical into a number of harmless confidences, unlikely, it seemed to me, to awaken either interest or indignation. The questions asked were of the mildly searching order, like those which delighted the hearts of children, when I was a very little girl, in our "Mental Photograph Albums." "Who is your favorite character in fiction?" "Who is your favorite character in history?" "What do you consider the finest attribute of man?" Having amiably responded to a portion of these inquiries, I was surprised and flattered, some weeks later, at seeing myself described in a daily paper—on the strength, too, of my own confessions—as irrational, morbid, and cruel; excusable only on the score of melancholy surroundings and a sickly constitution. And the delightful part of it was that I had apparently revealed all this myself. "Do not contend in words about things of no consequence," counsels St. Teresa, who carried with her to the cloister wisdom enough to have kept all of us poor worldlings out of trouble.