" I do not know that
I commonly dwelt much upon my personal appearance, save as it
thrust itself as an incongruity into my father's life, and in
spite of unending evidence to the contrary, there were even black
moments when I allowed myself to speculate as to whether he might
not share the feeling. Happily, however, this specter was laid
before it had time to grow into a morbid familiar by a very
trifling incident. One day I met my father coming out of his
bank on the main street of the neighboring city which seemed to
me a veritable whirlpool of society and commerce. With a playful
touch of exaggeration, he lifted his high and shining silk hat
and made me an imposing bow. This distinguished public
recognition, this totally unnecessary identification among a mass
of "strange people" who couldn't possibly know unless he himself
made the sign, suddenly filled me with a sense of the absurdity
of the entire feeling. It may not even then have seemed as
absurd as it really was, but at least it seemed enough so to
collapse or to pass into the limbo of forgotten specters.
I made still other almost equally grotesque attempts to express
this doglike affection. The house at the end of the village in
which I was born, and which was my home until I moved to
Hull-House, in my earliest childhood had opposite to it--only
across the road and then across a little stretch of
greensward--two mills belonging to my father; one flour mill, to
which the various grains were brought by the neighboring farmers,
and one sawmill, in which the logs of the native timber were
sawed into lumber.
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