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While antique hunting on an autumn day in 1936 I went into a house near Saratoga where a sale of the contents was in progress. In a china closet there I saw some little flowered cards, and for a moment I almost felt as though I were twelve years old again. Those cards had all the power of a perfume to call up the past. It almost seemed to me that I could hear my mother exclaiming, in her German words, her deep pleasure over the exquisite calling cards I had provided for her.

In Ellis, except for staple goods, we did our shopping by mail. Every year we sent five cents in stamps to some Eastern house, so as to receive its catalogue. Another means by which we extended our knowledge of what was right and proper in the world outside of Ellis was by reading all the advertisements in the magazines we saw. We traded magazines around among the neighbors, but eventually my favorite, almost my Bible, was The Scientific American. However, I am not sure just where I saw the printed offer to set me up in business as an agent for these calling cards. Anyway, my mother, as she stirred, bare-armed, some creamy batter in a yellow mixing bowl, looked at me proudly and consented to be my first customer.