The Heart Has its Reasons [antikvár]

A PREFATORY NOTE Mine is a simple story - or so I like to think. It is the story of an ordinary life that became extraordinary. The question has come down through the ages : Is our fate in our stars or does it lie within ourselves ? The watchword of the hour is planning. Everyone and everything is supposed to work according to some master plan; few would have the temerity to admit that chance or mischance plays any part in the ordering of his or her life. Yet I often find myself wondering whether there has been some sort of plan that controlled my life. The person who knows me best, my Aunt Bessie Merry-man, enters a strong affirmative. Now forging resolutely into the nineties, with her wit and wits still about her and memories stretching across half the life-span of the American republic, my Aunt Bessie insists that I have always had a plan germinating in the back of my mind for everything I have done. And to prove her point she can look backward down a long and complicated road, citing dates and episodes as far back, in fact, as my first young people's party, which must have been in Teddy Roosevelt's time. On that occasion, according to my ever-truthful aunt, I am supposed to have persuaded my mother, after a foot-stamping scene, to substitute for the blue sash she wanted me to wear with my white dress a bright red one. 'I remember exactly what you said,' my aunt now insists. 'You told your mother you wanted a red sash so the boys would notice you.' Whether I succeeded in producing the desired effect at the party, after having had my way with my mother, I do not now remember; I should rather imagine otherwise. While conceding my aunt's point in the matter of the red sash, I must disagree with her theory that I have operated under a succession of private Tive-Year Plans. No one who succeeded in getting into as much trouble as I have managed