I prayed for an immediate plan and as I prayed, as is my custom, I
acted. I asked Mr. Douglass Byrd quick, if there was time for me to do
an impersonation, and he answered with the most wonderfully
encouraging smile:
"Go ahead, Miss Phyllis, and you can heat them all."
Now, the only person in the world I could ever be like is my own self,
or Father himself, and as I sat and looked at him the idea came. Last
year the governess took me to hear Father make a speech when he
presented a library building to the college from which he graduated.
It was such a fine one and full of so much humor and pathos, as all
speeches should be to hold the attention of an audience, that it was
published in all the papers in New York, and I learned it by heart
from pride over it. That was what I impersonated--my own father with
him looking on!
All the others had had costumes and burnt cork and things to help
them; but I had on a pink flowered organdie and pink slippers with a
huge pink bow on my head, and my looks were all dead against my
success. But I did succeed! I knew I would when I took my stand and
looked down into Father's surprised and alarmed face.
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