Yesterday I mentioned that on the 22dⒶtextual note of September I went up to Norfolk, Connecticut, from New York, and witnessed my daughter Clara’s débutⒶtextual note as a singer. She had sung in public once before, but that was in ItalyⒶtextual note Ⓔexplanatory note in a class of a dozen other girls—a music teacher’s exhibition—and of course the house was full of approving and uncritical papas and mammas and brothers and sisters and aunts and cousins and uncles, and it was not a real débutⒶtextual note, and had few of the terrors of a real débutⒶtextual note. It was two years and a half ago. In Norfolk Clara was two-thirds of the entire show. The other third consisted, according to custom,Ⓐtextual note of interlardings of instrumental music.Ⓐtextual note She showed good nerve. She was frozen stiff with stage-frightⒶtextual note, but it was not detectable.

She always had plenty of nerve. I think I have several times touched upon this fact in earlier chapters. Once when she was seven years oldⒶtextual note she came near being burnt up one morning, but she was more interested in the tumult and excitement than she was in the danger. As far as the peril was concerned, she was as indifferent as if she had a paid-upⒶtextual note fire policy on her life. She had the diphtheria, and had been removed to our room so that her mother might have her under her eye all the time. She was in her crib, and over the crib had been built a tent of blankets; on the floor was an alcohol lamp, which supplied heat to a vessel filled with lactic acid and lime; from this vessel a spout discharged the medicated steam into the tent. It was early morning. The season was winter, and the weather was very cold. Mrs. Clemens left the room for a moment, and then one of those accidents happenedⒶtextual note which had been decreed by Adam’s first act—or, at any rate, was an unavoidable result of that act.Ⓐtextual note TheⒶtextual note lamp set the blanket-tent and the bedding on fire. Rosa, the German nurse, entered at that moment. The flames were streaming up round about the child, but that did not make Rosa lose her head—nothing ever did, during the twelve years that she was in our service. She went at the work of rescue with that fine intelligence which begins at the right end instead of the wrong end. She first snatched Clara from the crib and put her on the bed; then sheⒶtextual note flung up a window; nextⒶtextual note she gathered the burning tent in her hands and carried it there and flung it out;Ⓐtextual note next she carried the burning mattress and bedding to the window and threw them out; finally she enveloped the child in wraps. She did all these things in their proper order, giving each service its right and proper place in the list. Rosa was a swift person, and she accomplished these several things in about the space of time it would have taken me to think out one of them and start out to hunt up somebody to do it. Clara was not badly scorched, and she enjoyed all the details of the stirring incident. (ThisⒶtextual note was Rosa’s testimony.)Ⓐtextual note She also [begin page 241] enjoyed the tumult and the excited ejaculations which followed when her mother and I and the entire household, big and little, swarmed into the room a few moments later. We got the impression that she would like to have it all done over again.

While I am back in that distant time I will go on and tell about what happened the next morning, and the morning after. On the first of these two mornings Jean, a baby of one year’s experience of life, was asleep in her crib in the nursery, under a tall canopy of flimsy white muslin, or some such material. The crib was in front of a brisk wood fire,Ⓐtextual note and the whole fireplace-frontⒶtextual note was covered by a spark-arrester in the form of a screen of fine copper wires—wires that were so close together that you could hardly insert a knife-blade between them—nevertheless a spark was discharged through this obstruction, and it lit on the slope of that canopy and set it afire. It was about breakfast-time,Ⓐtextual note and no one was in the room. The Polish wet-nurseⒺexplanatory note ought to have been there, but she wasn’t; she wasn’t, because Adam’s first act had created a chain of events which made it impossible for her to be there at that time.Ⓐtextual note But she presently entered and saw the canopy blazing up. She was not a Rosa, and she lost her head at once, what there was of it,Ⓐtextual note and went screaming out of the place. The screams brought Rosa, and she flew into the room and snatched Jean out and put her on the bed; next she ran and threw up a window;Ⓐtextual note then she carried the burning mattress and bed-clothes to the window and threw them out, along with what was left of the canopy; next she threw water on the crib and on the wood-work at the base of the wall—for both were on fire—and finally she clothed Jean in wraps, and was thenⒶtextual note all through and ready for the household to swarm in and make a tumult, as usual.

With the practice which Rosa had now accumulatedⒶtextual note, she could have saved a child from a burning crib every morning for the rest of her life, and never put any detail of the incident in the wrong place in the list. Jean had suffered two or three burns, but they were of small consequence.

The next morning, just before breakfast-timeⒶtextual note, Susy, aged nine, was practisingⒶtextual note at the piano in the schoolroomⒶtextual note, which adjoined the nursery. At one end of the room a fire of large logs was burning. Susy was at the other end of the room with her back toward the fire. A log burned in two and the ends fell and scattered coals around about the heavy wood-work which supported the mantelpiece,Ⓐtextual note and set it on fire. Just at the right moment the barber entered that room. This had been made necessary and unavoidable by Adam’s first act, and could never have happened if Adam had done something other than the thing which he did do.Ⓐtextual note No one was likely to enter that room at that hour. The barber had never entered it before; he had always shaved me in a bedroomⒶtextual note on the ground floor, but this time, in obedience to Adam’s arrangement,Ⓐtextual note that room was in possession of a guest, and George, the colored butlerⒺexplanatory note, had sent the barber up to the schoolroomⒶtextual note with instructions to abide there in peace until I should come. He made no outcry when he saw the flames climbing to the mantelpiece, but brought water from the nursery bath-roomⒶtextual note and extinguished them. If AdamⒶtextual note had delayed him even three or four minutes, the house could not have been saved.

Our family has never had many adventures, and so we have always set a high value on [begin page 242] the three which I have describedⒺexplanatory note; and the value of them to us has been greatly enhanced by the fact that they were not scattered over a period of months or years, but all happened in a bunch in three consecutive days.

Rosa was a remarkable girl. She was very lively, and active, and spirited, with a strong sense of humor, and she had a rollicking laugh that came easily and was as catching as the smallpox. You would not expect such a character to be cool and prompt and effective in an emergency, but she was. I have not met her match for coolness and clear-headedness and wisdom in times of excitement and peril. Once when Clara was four years oldⒶtextual note we were living for a time on the third floor of a hotel in Baden-Baden, and one morning a middle-aged German chambermaidⒶtextual note appeared in our room, white-faced and trembling, and tried to tell us something, but was so frightened that she couldn’t speak. While we waited—which was the natural thing for ordinary people to do—Rosa didn’t, but slipped out, without a word, and found Clara entertaining herself in a most questionable way. She had crowded her small body through the pillarsⒺexplanatory note of the marble balustrade,Ⓐtextual note and had thenⒶtextual note faced about and clasped her hands around a pillar, with her back overhanging the marble pavement of the lobby, three stories below. Rosa approached her nonchalantly, and said,Ⓐtextual note

“Wait here, ClärchenⒶtextual note, I am going to bring you something pretty—no, maybe I better take you with me. It is at the other end of the hall.”

Then she lifted the child over the balusters, brought her and delivered her into the arms of her mother, and then sat down and cried.

She saved Clara again the next summer, in America.Ⓐtextual note It was at the seaside,Ⓐtextual note and a number of children attended by their nurses were playing in the water. I was sitting on a little precipice twenty-five feet high overlookingⒶtextual note the scene. Rosa and Susy were sitting on the sand at some little distance from Clara. A girl seven or eightⒶtextual note years old began to splash water in Clara’s face; this bewildered the child and partially strangled her, and in struggling to get away from the persecution she fell on her face, and so remained, helplessly struggling.Ⓐtextual note Of course this meant death,Ⓐtextual note unless a rescue was prompt. The nursery maids stood appalled, and through fright they were not able to move a limb. There was no way for me to get down that precipice without breaking my neck. But after a moment Rosa sawⒶtextual note what had happened,Ⓐtextual note and she came flying andⒶtextual note rushed in and dragged the child ashore. Clara has had other alarming adventures by water, and if I had been the right kind of a father I would have taken out both fire and marine insurance on her long ago.

When Rosa had been with us twelve years she married a young farmerⒺexplanatory note whose place was near Susy Crane’sⒶtextual note “Quarry Farm.” The couple put in a corn crop, and when it was sprouting the crows came and began to digⒶtextual note up the result. There was no scarecrow, but Rosa had a superannuated old gingham umbrella, and she spread it and stuck it up amidst the corn-sproutsⒶtextual note for a scarecrowⒶtextual note. Then she sat down on the porch very much pleased with her cunning idea. But there was a surprise awaiting her. It began to rain, and the crows pulled up the corn-sproutsⒶtextual note and took them under the umbrella to eat them!Ⓐtextual note Rosa’s sense of humor enabled her to enjoy that episode to the full.