twenty years at hull house

thick book entitled "The History of the World'' as affording a shorter

and an easier path.

Although I constantly confided my sins and perplexities to my father, there are only a few occasions on which I remember having received direct advice or admonition; it may easily he true, however,

that I have forgotten the latter, in the manner of many seekers after

advice who enjoyably set forth their situation but do not really listen

to the advice itself. I can remember an admonition on one occasion,

however, when, as a little girl of eight years, arrayed in a new cloak,

gorgeous beyond anything I had ever worn before, I stood before my

father for his approval. I was much chagrined by his remark that it was

a very pretty cloak —in fact so much prettier than any cloak the other

little girls in the Sunday school had, that he would advise me to wear

my old cloak, which would keep me quite as warm, with the added

advantage of not making the other little girls feel badly. I complied

with the request hut I fear without inner consent, and I certainly was

quite without the joy of self-sacrifice as I walked soberly through the

village street by the side of my counselor. My mind was busy, however,

with the old question eternally suggested by the inequalities of the

human lot. Only as we neared the church door did I venture to ask

what could he done about it, receiving the reply that it might never be

righted so far as clothes went, but that people might be equal in things

that mattered much more than clothes, the affairs of education and

religion, for instance, which we attended to when we went to school and church, and that it was very stupid to wear the sort of clothes that

made it harder to have equality even there.

It must have been a little later when I held a conversation with my

father upon the doctrine of foreordination, which at one time very

much perplexed my childish mind. After setting the difficulty before

him and complaining that I could not make it out, although my best

friend "understood it perfectly,'' I settled down to hear his argument,

having no doubt that he could make it quite clear. To my delighted

surprise, for any intimation that our minds were on an equality lifted

me high indeed, he said that he feared that he and I did not have the

kind of mind that would ever understand foreordination very well and

advised me not to give too much time to it; hut he then proceeded to

say other things of which the final impression left upon my mind was,

that it did not matter much whether one understood foreordination or