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accomplished lady of good birth—music, painting,
composition, and modern languages—but the requirements
of young ladyhood at the time, the intolerable
restrictions, the meaningless polite necessities,
and the confined sedentary life, had been from early
years extremely distasteful to her, and she longed
for active usefulness. As a child she had found a
partial outlet for her surplus energy and budding
indignation against the wrongs of the world in a
mania for destroying her playthings and otherwise
annoying her governess and relatives. At twelve she
dreamed of disguising herself as a page and joining
the military forces of the Crown Prince, Bernadotte,
and seeking adventures in war. Home was a prison to
her restless spirit. She yearned for fame; she wanted
to become a nurse; even a prolonged study tour through
Germany, Holland, and Switzerland failed to satisfy
her intense thirst for freedom and knowledge; and
her feeling of revolt was only partially assuaged,
later, when she had the opportunity of practising
charity among the tenants of the home estate.
In the interim, however, the gifted girl had read
a vast number of foreign tales and novels. Her
imagination had been aroused, and she had learned to
use mental pictures of forced elopements and other
stirring adventures as a kind of antidote to her own
inactive existence. She had
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