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I got into college. I think it was better that I went to boarding school than if I had attended high school in that small town, because at least I was better prepared for college.

And you were given a freer rein in your studies, I would think, to wander farther afield.

Yes, I think I was better educated than I would have been at the high school. The teachers were certainly better.

You speak about being bored as a little child. Was your mother aware of this?

No, I don't think that she was at all. She was about 39 years old when I was born. She'd had very little experience with children. I don't think that she realized it at all. I took refuge in reading books very early; I read a great deal before I had left the grade schools. I don't think she realized I was bored.

I may have been bored because I wasn't well a great deal of the time. I had dysentery when I was little, when I was taken south for the winter. I got dysentery later on, when I was six or seven or eight until I was eleven or twelve. I had mastoids every winter, it seems to me, painful, painful earaches that would result in mastoids, a draining ear. All of that now is eliminated with penicillin or sulfa drugs. And it may have been because I was in poor health that I was bored and not permitted to do a lot