I have read some girl-books, a few years ago--“Hildegarde Grahame,”
and “What Katy Did,” and all,--but I read them from afar. I looked
at those creatures from behind a high board fence. I felt as if
I had more tastes in common with the Jews wandering through the
wilderness, or with a band of fighting Amazons. I am not a girl. I
am a woman, of a kind. I began to be a woman at twelve, or more
properly, a genius.
And then, usually, if one is not a girl one is a heroine--of the
kind you read about. But I am not a heroine, either. A heroine
is beautiful--eyes like the sea shoot opaque glances from under
drooping lids--walks with undulating movements, her bright smile
haunts one still, falls methodically in love with a man--always
with a man, eats things (they are always called “viands”) with a
delicate appetite, and on special occasions her voice is full of
tears. I do none of these things. I am not beautiful. I do not walk
with undulating movements--indeed, I have never seen any one walk
so, except, perhaps, a cow that has been overfed. My bright smile
haunts no one. I shoot no opaque glances from my eyes, which are
not like the sea by any means. I have never eaten any viands, and
my appetite for what I do eat is most excellent. And my voice has
never yet, to my knowledge, been full of tears.
No, I am not a heroine.
There never seem to be any plain heroines, except Jane Eyre, and
she was very unsatisfactory. She should have entered into marriage
with her beloved Rochester in the first place. I should have, let
there be a dozen mad wives upstairs. But I suppose the author
thought she must give her heroine some desirable thing--high moral
principles, since she was not beautiful. Some people say that beauty
is a curse. It may be true, but I’m sure I should not have at all
minded being cursed a little. And I know several persons who might
well say the same. But, anyway, I wish some one would write a book
about a plain, bad heroine so that I might feel in real sympathy
with her.
So far from being a girl or a heroine, I am a thief--as I have
before suggested.
I mind me of how, not long since, I stole three dollars. A woman
whom I know rather well, and lives near, called me into her house
as I was passing and asked me to do an errand for her. She was
having an ornate gown made, and she needed some more appliqué with
which to festoon it. The appliqué cost nine dollars a yard. My
trusting neighbor gave me a bit of the braid for a sample and two
twenty-dollar bills. I was to get four yards. I did so, and came
back and gave her the braid and a single dollar. The other three
dollars I kept myself. I wanted three dollars very much, to put
with a few that I already had in my purse. My trusting neighbor is
of the kind that throws money about carelessly. I knew she would
not pay any attention to a little detail like that,--she was deeply
interested in her new frock; or perhaps she would think I had got
thirty-nine dollars’ worth of appliqué. At any rate, she did not
need the money, and I wanted three dollars, and so I stole it.