True to type I cried by the hour over fancied slights from my schoolmates, and brooded days at a time because Father or Mother "didn't understand," I questioned everything in the earth beneath and the heavens above; and in my dark despair over an averted glance from my most intimate friend, I meditated on whether life was, or was not, worth the living, with a preponderance toward the latter.
Being plunged into a state of settled gloom, I then became acutely anxious as to my soul's salvation, and feverishly pursued every ism and ology that caught my roving eye's attention, until in one short month I had become, in despairing rotation, an incipient agnostic, atheist, pantheist, and monist.

Meanwhile I read Ibsen, and wisely discussed the new school of domestic relationships.
Mother--dear mother!--looked on aghast.

She feared, I think, for my life; certainly for my sanity and morals.
It was Father this time who came to the rescue.

He pooh-poohed Mother's fears; said it was indigestion that ailed me, or that I was growing too fast; or perhaps I didn't get enough sleep, or needed, maybe, a good tonic.

He took me out of school, and made it a point to accompany me on long walks.