My mother, you must know, was a person of advanced ideas, and as I was the first child, I also was a fine object for experimenting on. One of her pet theories was that all children should be raised by moral suasion—that, in direct opposition to Solomon’s advice “to spare the rod and spoil the child,” whipping was an abomination.

As a matter of fact, between you and me, the gate post, I was not, and never shall be, a fit object for experimenting with pet theories. When one uses them on me, no matter how nice they come out with other folks, they somehow don’t materialize in my case.

Well, one day, when I was quite young—shall I tell my age, or not?—my mother had just bought a new book on child nature, to add to her store of a hundred or more. She had been reading it all day and I knew from sad experience that that meant “danger ahead” for me.

Now, all that day there had been a man painting the house next door which adjoined our lot, and in order to finish it, he had to come over in our yard. He left his paints and went away for a while. Mother warned me, positively, on pain of losing my supper, not to touch his paints. Being a direct descendant of Eve, how could I help but touch them? Soon, I had a regular batter of all sorts of paints mixed in.

A bright idea came to me, of decorating the neighbor’s house. I did this, making all kinds of lovely pictures of men, women, houses, and dogs,—in fact anything that my artistic skill could do. I was in the midst of an intensely interesting and realistic representation of a horse and his rider when I heard an exclamation. I turned to see my mother—the picture of horror—standing at the door.

I felt a sort of presentiment of what was coming, but boldly went to her when she called me. Sternly she bade me go and be washed and not to touch her—I was paint from top to toe. I went off blithely, thinking all was over. That shows how I was then lacking in vision.

When I had been completely washed and made all clean, my mother, taking me by the hand, led me gently upstairs to her room. After telling me how distressed she was with her little girl, she told me I must stay there a long time and that I was not to have any dinner. I grew doleful and began to beg off, but no use, and I felt still more wretched when I heard the key turn in the lock.

I sat down on the floor and was crying my apron full of tears, when I looked up and caught sight of something that filled my soul with joy. Up I leapt, my tears forgotten. Columbus never felt as proud as I did then, at my discovery. It was simply Mother’s hat, lying there with its ostrich plumes, newly arrived from the milliner’s. It gave me the idea of playing Indian, with those plumes in my hair—and with this as a starting point, I soon had all sorts of ideas to help me out.

I reddened my face in streaks with her nail polish, I daubed powder all over it, too, and I got her curling irons fastened in my hair, I remember, when trying to fix up a headdress. I tore the plumes off the hat, got a shawl from somewhere, and fixed it on my grimy little person, for a train—my pet ambition. My! such strutting as I was doing! Mother’s bracelets and chains—everything I could find and possibly wear—were strung all over me.

At last, when my dressing was over, I stood before the pier glass, calmly admiring the picture I made. I strutted up and down, back and forth, like a little peacock, to see how my train acted.

Adjusting this, which did not act just right, when I felt something. O ye gods and little fishes, the way of the transgressor is very hard—I found it so.

I remember thinking that I must go in to put something around her room. She was sitting serenely... plumes from her hat... in my hair.

Well, here it was—and my mother, standing by her stand—

I beg you—draw the curtain over the ending, and suffice it to say that fire on my mother’s altar burned no more. The books on how to raise children by moral suasion... had frequent recourse to the slipper.