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Becoming Hewlett Packard
Becoming Hewlett Packard
Why Strategic Leadership Matters

Robert A. Burgelman

Webb McKinney

Philip E. Meza

1
 1
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.

© Robert A. Burgelman, Webb McKinney, and Philip E. Meza 2017

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction
rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above.

You must not circulate this work in any other form

and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.

Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data

Names: Burgelman, Robert A., author. | McKinney, Webb, author. |
Meza, Philip E., author.
Title: Becoming Hewlett Packard : why strategic leadership matters / Robert
A. Burgelman, Webb McKinney, Philip E. Meza.
Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2017] | Includes index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016017258 | ISBN 9780190640446 (hardcover) |
ISBN 9780190640460 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Hewlett-Packard Company—Management. | Computer
industry—United States. | Electronic industries—United States.
Classification: LCC HD9696.2.U64 H4938 2017 | DDC 338.7/610040973—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016017258

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America
 CONTENTS

Foreword
Modesto A. Maidique╇ vii
Acknowledgments╇ ix
Preface
Robert A. Burgelman╇ xiii

Part I: Corporate Becoming: An Integral Strategic Leadership Process

Robert A. Burgelman

1. Corporate Becoming and Strategic Leadership╇ 3

2. HP’s History of Becoming, 1939–╉2016: An Integral Process Overview╇ 50

Part II: HP’s History of Becoming: Differential Successive CEO Contributions

Robert A. Burgelman, Webb McKinney, and Philip E. Meza

3. Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard Build a Great Test and

Measurement Instruments Company╇ 85

4. John Young Doubles Down on Computing╇ 116

5. Lew Platt Pivots HP Toward Commodity Business╇ 149

6. Carly Fiorina Drives HP Toward Scale and Scope╇ 185

7. Mark Hurd Relentlessly Manages for Results╇ 225

8. Léo Apotheker Intends to Revolutionalize HP╇ 266

Part III: Corporate Becoming and Strategic Leadership:

Harnessing the Past and Driving the Future
Robert A. Burgelman

9. Meg Whitman Resolves Strategic Integration Challenges,

from Better Together to Splitting HP in Two╇ 293

10. Corporate Becoming: Why Strategic Leadership Matters╇ 329

List of Interviewees╇ 369

Index╇ 373
 FOREWORD

BUILT TO BECOME
Becoming Hewlett Packard represents a tour de force through the strategic evolu-
tion of one of America’s iconic companies. Born in Silicon Valley, a few blocks from
Stanford University, Hewlett Packard (HP) has come to symbolize the rise of both
Silicon Valley and the great university that anchors it. In this superb and expansive
tome, Stanford Professor Robert Burgelman and his co-authors guide us through the
multiple stages of HP’s growth and development.
For business scholars, the critical role of strategic choice in HP’s storied history
shines through. For students of leadership, the central role of the seven main actors in
HP’s history is dynamically profiled.
Throughout this must-read corporate biography for HP observers and analysts,
Burgelman integrates both new and traditional tools of strategic analysis in a way that
enables us to understand and analyze the full depth of the complex HP story.
For instance, the initial conditions an incoming CEO faces impact his or her
choices for the future. It is not clear whether Burgelman intended to underscore this
point, but the concept of “initial conditions” is critical to the analysis of the function-
ing of the electronic circuits that underpin HP products. This point will be especially
impactful for engineers, specifically electrical engineers, as they will appreciate this
implied metaphor. In that vein, former HP CEO Carly Fiorina reminds us that CEOs
should consider the implications of their decisions well beyond their tenure. This
interlinking of initial conditions left behind by outgoing CEOs represents a critical
factor in the strategic option set that the new CEO encounters.
Prominent choices—such as the acquisitions of Electronic Data Systems and
Compaq—have had long-term consequences for HP, spanning multiple CEOs.
During its nearly 80-year history, HP has gone through seven phases of evolution and
seven CEOs—though not necessarily in corresponding sets.
Bill Hewlett and David Packard presided over three of these transitions, and they
left a durable legacy. In the fast-changing world of high technology industries, peri-
odic shifts in strategy are absolutely critical for corporate survival. The point here is
not that companies that succeed are built to last. Rather, they are built to evolve, or in
Burgelman’s words, they are built to become. And nowhere has the process of “becom-
ing” been more clearly analyzed and examined in its full complexity than in this splen-
did book.
For me, the great story of HP is quite personal. I first encountered Hewlett Packard
upon entering the freshman electronics laboratory at MIT, where I discovered an

vii
 viii Foreword

HP-200C audio oscillator and a Tektronix 503 oscilloscope on my lab bench. These
two instruments would remain my dependable companions for some time to come.
HP soon emerged as a recurring presence in my life, most notably when HP became a
major customer of a company I later cofounded, Analog Devices Semiconductor, and
we became customers for HP’s waveform generators and oscilloscopes.
As a professor at the Harvard Business School, and later at Stanford, I would
integrate David Packard’s book, The HP Way, and cases about HP, into my courses.
More so, as a junior professor at Stanford in the early 1980s, I had the audacity to cold
call and question David Packard directly. He not only welcomed my inquiry, but he
agreed to address my class on the Management of High Technology Companies and
to answer the students’ many questions. As I reminisce about David Packard’s most
enjoyable visit, I am reminded how I always walked a few blocks to class from my
office. I must say, however, walking alongside the 6’5” David Packard was more like
running. I will always remember the most poignant question put forth by one of the
participants in the aftermath of David Packard’s 1982 lecture: “Mr. Packard, how come
Hewlett-Packard has been so successful?”
Without missing a beat, David Packard said, “I guess we just found a way to make
a better product.”
This book explores how HP—sometimes through excellent strategic choices, and
sometimes by stumbling—found a way to make the “better product” Mr. Packard
described.
Once again, I am pleased and honored to reencounter this iconic firm, a firm I grew
up with—as a student, as an electrical engineer, a professor, and now through a superb
book by my friend and colleague Robert Burgelman and his co-authors. Becoming
Hewlett Packard will surely endure as the defining strategic analysis of HP, a uniquely
American technology giant.
Modesto A. Maidique, President Emeritus, Florida International University
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Robert A. Burgelman
Having completed research about Intel Corporation’s transformation from a semicon-
ductor memory company to a microprocessor company in the early to mid-​1980s,
Andy Grove and I had become deeply interested in corporate longevity in turbu-
lent environments. We quickly realized that right in Stanford University’s backyard,
Hewlett Packard (HP) had been able to transform itself multiple times by the mid-​
1990s. When Carly Fiorina was hired as the company’s first externally recruited CEO
in 1999, Andy made contact with her to suggest we do a case study tracking her ten-
ure and she accepted. No words suffice to express the good fortune of having had the
opportunity to engage with Andy Grove in joint writing and teaching at the Stanford
Business School for some twenty-​four years.
The case studies about Fiorina’s tenure as CEO started the seventeen-​year research
effort of studying the role of strategic leadership in HP’s evolution that led to the writ-
ing of this book. Over the years, many busy HP executives and outside management
experts have participated in the research. I’d like to thank all of them for providing the
data on which the book is based. In particular, I’d like to thank John Young, Joan Platt
(Lew Platt’s widow, who provided interesting and poignant insights into Lew’s CEO
tenure), Carly Fiorina, Mark Hurd, Léo Apotheker, and Meg Whitman for their will-
ingness to make time to participate in interviews and provide the CEO perspectives
that form the foundation for the book’s chapters.
Stanford Business School has for thirty-​five years provided an exceptionally
stimulating and supportive environment for conducting the longitudinal qualitative
research that informs my academic writing. I am grateful that the school’s leadership
has seemed comfortable with the fact that this type of research usually led to answer-
ing the “What are you working on?” with “I don’t know (until it is finished).” The long
time taken by the completion of this book is testimony to the importance of this trust-
ing support. I am also grateful for having been named the School’s BP Faculty Fellow
in Global Management in 2012–​2013 and 2015–​2016 while I was working on the
book’s conceptual framing and its completion. In addition, during the last dozen or so
years I have been in some ways a one-​man strategic management subgroup within the
school’s large organizational behavior group, and I’d like to thank my Organizational
Behavior colleagues for making me feel like I belong.
I would also like to thank the Judge Business School, University of Cambridge,
for inviting me for a brief stay as a visiting professor in early 2009, and Sydney Sussex
College for inducting me as a visiting fellow. As I naively suggested at one Friday night’s

ix
 x Acknowledgments

High Table dinner that I was beginning to understand the functioning of the colleges
in the university’s eight-​hundred-​year history, one of the dons sitting across from me
replied in a mildly sarcastic tone, “Sir, you must be the only man in Cambridge who
does.” Slightly humiliated, I realized there was important truth implied in this reply:
no single theoretical framework can account for the longevity of institutions. Hence,
while this book uses the research lens of strategic leadership, there are other research
lenses that can throw different light on organizational longevity.
The book’s strategic leadership frameworks and research findings were pre-
sented in friendly Stanford Business School alumni meetings in Hong Kong (2013),
Copenhagen (2014), Zurich (2015), London (2015), Stanford (2013 Stanford
Executive Program 1998 reunion and 2015), and Stockholm (2016), and I thank
the local alumni representatives for making this possible. I also thank Professor
Wang Yi of Tsinghua University (Beijing), Professor Christophe Midler of the Ecole
Polytechnique (Paris), and Professor Richard Whittington of the Said Business
School (University of Oxford) for inviting me to give seminars in 2013, 2014, and
2015, respectively, which gave me the opportunity to test with academic colleagues
the progress I was making.
As the lead author, I want to thank my two coauthors for excellently collaborating
on this book. As a research associate from the late 1990s till 2007 at Stanford, Philip
helped write several cases documenting the CEO tenure of Carly Fiorina, the HP–​
Compaq merger, the Innovation Program Office of HP’s Personal Systems Group, and
the historical development of HP’s networking business. He also put together materi-
als for the early drafts of most of the chapters of this book and helped with the final
editing of these. Webb McKinney was a major protagonist in the HP–​Compaq merger
case, coauthored an academic article based on the strategic integration of the merger,
and also coauthored the HP networking case. Webb was instrumental in convincing
many of his senior executive acquaintances at HP to participate in the interviewing
process and provided important data and input for the chapters that would have been
impossible to get otherwise. He also provided helpful edits for these chapters. The task
of developing the conceptual frameworks for the book, however, remained with the
academic member of the research team, and so I should be held solely responsible for
all the remaining theoretical and conceptual shortcomings of this book.
Oxford University Press agreed to publish this book, and I am grateful to David
Musson, OUP editor based in Oxford, who in early 2015 recruited four anonymous
reviewers of the book’s prospectus and provided edits for most of the chapters. After
David’s retirement in fall 2015, Scott Parris, OUP editor based in New York, took over
and has offered important additional editorial guidance. I thank Scott for his patience
and gentle encouragement of the final drive to complete the manuscript. And also thanks
to OUP’s Cathryn Vaulman for helping with the administrative and operational issues
involved in getting the manuscript ready for production. Upon Scott’s retirement, Anne
Dellinger took over as OUP editor and later David Pervin as senior OUP editor, and I
like to thank Anne and David for seeing the book through to production and publication.
A special thanks also to Nanci Moore, my long-​time administrative assistant, who
has helped with rendering the figures and tables in electronic form and obtaining
 xi Acknowledgments

permissions for copyrighted material. She also has made the entire manuscript ready
for publication.
Finally, for me writing is a solitary and consuming activity. As on previous occa-
sions, I am grateful that my wife Rita has granted me the time and space, especially
during the last three years, to pursue yet another intellectual odyssey. However, she
also did again not allow me to completely forget that there are other important things
in life: in particular, the wonderful joy of becoming a grandparent of two grandsons
and participating in their early “becoming.” It is to 4 year old Jasper and 1.5 year old
Remy that I dedicate my personal contributions to this book.

Webb McKinney
Thank you, Robert and Philip, for asking me to join you in the creation of this book
about HP. I spent my entire thirty-​four-​year career at HP, and helping to write this
book was a very satisfying way for me to look back at what made HP great, and why it
began to struggle in more recent years.
I would also like to thank my many friends and colleagues at HP who agreed to
be interviewed for this book. Your candor, trust, and willingness to share your views
openly—​typical of the way we worked together at HP—​played a major role in making
this book so accurate and insightful.
Although they are both no longer with us, I must thank Bill and Dave for creating
such a great and strongly values-​driven company. I was very fortunate to have started
my career at HP when Bill and Dave were still on the scene and active in their com-
pany, and to have worked under so many great leaders trained directly or indirectly by
Bill and Dave. Thanks also to all the great people I worked with at HP for teaching me
so much. For all of us who spent a significant amount of time at the company, the HP
Way is real. It became our way of leading and stayed with us wherever we went after
HP. Because of this, the HP Way is still alive and well in many companies in Silicon
Valley.
Foremost, I want to thank my wife Chris for patiently discussing all aspects of this
book over the many years it took to research and complete. Her influence and sup-
port have shaped me, and can be found in this book too. Thanks also to my daugh-
ters Megan and Sarah, who experienced HP through me, and whose opinions I value
highly. I, too, would like to dedicate my work on this book to my grandchildren Ryann,
Luca, and Charlie (on the way), in hopes that they will have the great satisfaction of
working for outstanding companies.

Philip E. Meza
This book is the product of academic research and real-​life strategy and business prac-
tice. My coauthors are masters of these. It has been enlightening for me to work with
Robert and Webb on this book.
My association with Robert began many years ago when I joined him and Andy
Grove in their then already long-​running and popular class on strategy at Stanford. I
owe many intellectual debts to Andy for what he taught me about strategy, and philan-
thropy as well. While writing this book, and in my consulting work too, I hear Andy’s
 xii Acknowledgments

bass-​baritone voice in my head exhorting me to think harder and deeper and to always
question assumptions.
Silicon Valley can seem like a land of giants, because the combination of talent,
money, and desire to change the world is so strong here. Sometimes the giants are re-
ally just regular people on stilts. They usually tumble quickly. Sometimes they are real.
Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard really were giants. Of course they were not perfect, but
they built a long-​lived company that generated value over decades and inspired others,
including Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak.
Not least, Bill and Dave instructed and inspirited the many HP executives who
participated in our research for this book. I thank them all for sharing their insights
with Robert, Webb, and me.
Authors shape books but families shape authors, or at least mine has shaped me.
I owe much to my wife, Marjorie, who makes me better. I owe much to my parents,
Edward and Grace, who were my initial inspirations, and to Robert, Sara, Robbie,
Juliana, Caitlin, Kristen, Scarlett, Tara, and Reid, who each in their own ways are
reflected in my work.
 P R E FA C E

ELUCIDATING THE PROCESS OF CORPORATE

BECOMING: AN INTELLECTUAL ODYSSEY
Robert A. Burgelman
Half a century ago the out-​of-​the-​mainstream economist John Kenneth Galbraith
published The New Industrial State (1967),1 in which he describes how the developed
economies—​socialist as well as capitalist—​were inexorably bifurcating. He observed
that one part of the economy continued to consist of the traditional mass of atom-
istic entrepreneurial firms still controlled by the market (and therefore, at the time,
favored by the mainstream economic textbooks), and that the other part increasingly
comprised a relatively small number (in the hundreds) of massively large corporations
that formed a new “industrial system.” These corporations were able to wrest control
away from the market (and therefore were largely ignored by the mainstream econom-
ics textbooks). They did so with long-​term planning, strong reliance on technological
innovation, control of the demand for their products and services through marketing
expertise, and self-​funding of their large capital investment, research and development
(R&D), and growth through retained earnings.
Associated with the rise of these giant corporations, Galbraith saw the development of
a “technostructure” that “embraces all who bring specialized knowledge, talent or experi-
ence to group decision-​making. This, not the management, is the guiding intelligence—​
the brain—​of the enterprise” (71). By implication, the rise of the technostructure
indicated that the role of management basically had changed from substantive decision-​
making to ratification. Related to this, Galbraith noted that the great late nineteenth-​
century entrepreneurial industry consolidators—​Rockefeller, Morgan, Duke, Harriman,
Guggenheim, Durant, du Pont, Chrysler, Hartford, Hilton—​were able to unite control
of capital with unquestioned authority in the enterprise. By the mid-​twentieth century,
however, “no one of equal notoriety ever followed these pioneers. The names of the suc-
cessors in office are lost to history or were never known” (88). Concomitant with these
developments, Galbraith also pointed at the radical decline in the power of the sharehold-
ers of these large, complex, and technologically sophisticated corporations.
While providing a compelling theoretical synthesis of various fragmented insights
into the evolution of the industrialized world, the thesis of The New Industrial State
turned out to be only partially correct.
First, as Andy Grove and I have reported,2 of the largest one hundred companies in
the United States in 1965, only nineteen remained on that list in 2005. In other words,
the “gale of creative destruction,” and the more recently identified force of “disruptive
xiii
 xiv Preface

technology,”3 did not spare many of the most famous large US-​based corporations that
existed at the time of the writing of The New Industrial State. Also not anticipated, but
clearly a force that has shaped the survival of some and the disappearance of many
other large corporations, is the emergence of relatively powerful agents of shareholder
activism. These have introduced—​to use another of Galbraith’s influential phrases—​
a new level of “countervailing power” in the relationship with entrenched corporate
management.4
Furthermore, Galbraith’s analysis was very much influenced by Schumpeter’s
later work Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (1942),5, which had posited a shift
in the engine of innovation from the individual entrepreneur to the large corpo-
ration, and therefore also that the latter needed to control market uncertainty as
much as possible to continue to bear the risks associated with innovation and sur-
vive the gale of creative destruction. Galbraith, however, did not quite anticipate
that Schumpeter’s earlier work, The Theory of Economic Development (1911, 1934),6
which had posited the central role of the individual entrepreneur in creating new
companies, had not quite faded away into historical obscurity. Instead, it was soon
going to resurge in relevance with the emergence of a new wave of radically new
technological innovation in electronics (transistor, integrated circuit, semicon-
ductor memory, microprocessor), computer science (hardware and software),
molecular biology (gene splicing, genome sequencing), and other areas (such as
mobile communications).
Sure enough, in the decades since The New Industrial State a new set of names of
entrepreneurial CEOs have entered into the public consciousness: Steve Jobs, Bill
Gates, Robert Noyce, Gordon Moore, Andrew Grove, Michael Dell, Jeff Bezos, Larry
Page, Marc Benioff, and Mark Zuckerberg are only some of the most recent famous
ones in the information technology industry. As the older Schumpeter and Galbraith
would have predicted, however, these new-​generation entrepreneurs have created very
large, complex, technologically sophisticated, mostly self-​funding enterprises with sig-
nificant market power that rely on an extensive technostructure (no longer known as
such). And, as with the previous generation of captains of industry, the followers of
these well-​known entrepreneurs in the CEO position do not usually command the
same level of notoriety and interest.
I believe that these historical observations are useful to help put in sharper per-
spective the contributions to knowledge that Becoming Hewlett Packard: Why Strategic
Leadership Matters intends to make. On the one hand, while today’s business media
(and business schools) are much enamored with Silicon Valley-​style start-​up entre-
preneurship, it really is only those start-​ups (HP in 1939) that are able to grow into
large, complex enterprises (HP in 2016) that materially impact the evolution of the
global industrial system. Hence, documenting the evolution and growth of Hewlett
Packard in this book provides some further empirical evidence of the continuation of
the development of the industrial system as theoretically sketched by Galbraith. On
the other hand, however, by using the research lens of strategic management, this book
is also able to illuminate and reaffirm the importance of the role of top management
and the CEO in HP’s evolution. In other words, the research findings presented in
 xv Preface

Becoming Hewlett Packard clearly show that Galbraith too heavily discounted the role
of the CEO’s (and top management’s) strategic leadership.
To briefly elaborate, Bill Hewlett and David Packard were among the first of the
new breed of entrepreneurs based in Silicon Valley (until the early 1960s a mostly
rural area in Northern California with a small town, Palo Alto, bordering on Stanford
University, itself the former site of the farm of Senator Leland Stanford) whose com-
pany, founded in the late 1930s, was still relatively small in the early 1960s and did
not appear on Galbraith’s research radar screen as part of the set of industrial giants at
the time of his writing of The New Industrial State. Yet from the 1960s on, HP would
grow to become very large, develop a novel type of technostructure (much less hi-
erarchical), be intensely technology-​driven, and able to manage the demand for its
products and mostly self-​fund its growth. Hence, the research efforts to elucidate the
dynamics of HP’s seventy-​seven-​year long integral process of becoming have the po-
tential to deepen our understanding of the forces that affect the longevity and the role
of the large, complex enterprise in today’s highly developed economic system. Also,
Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard have become viewed by many as the founding fathers
of Silicon Valley and will maintain, probably forever, their place among the iconic
entrepreneurial CEOs of the high-​technology industry. With the use of the strategic
management research lens it was possible, however, to put in greater relief the indis-
pensable role of successive CEOs following the founders in differentially contributing
to the integral process of the company’s becoming, and thereby securing its longevity.
Reflecting the intellectual efforts to develop these potential contributions,
Becoming Hewlett Packard: Why Strategic Leadership Matters is really two books in
one. The first one presents the frameworks that guide the analysis of the data (Part
I) and the substantive insights gained in the role of strategic leadership in corporate
becoming (Part III). The second one reports the use of the frameworks to shed light
on the differential strategic leadership approach and contributions of HP’s successive
CEOs to the company’s integral process of becoming (Part II).
The remainder of this preface provides a brief recapitulation of Becoming Hewlett
Packard’s long period of gestation, from genesis to completion.
The first idea of writing a book about HP started in 2004. Having completed sev-
eral case studies and interviews with then CEO Carly Fiorina and other top-​level HP
executives, Philip Meza, my research associate at the time, and I tentatively planned
to put together these materials in a book preliminarily called Reinventing HP. While
considering how to move that project forward, however, CEO Fiorina was replaced
with Mark Hurd in early 2005. During the 2005–​2010 period, Hurd was a yearly guest
speaker in the six-​week Stanford Executive Program that I then directed, which gener-
ated a great amount of data about the strategic challenges HP was facing and how the
new CEO was dealing with these. In the meantime, however, Philip had left Stanford
and I was involved in several new research projects with Andy Grove, my coteacher at
Stanford at the time. As a result, the HP book project was put on ice.
By the time Mark Hurd was replaced with Léo Apotheker in 2010, Philip and I
again had begun to think about resuming work on the HP book, but to take a different
tack by focusing it on how each of HP’s CEOs, from Dave Packard and Bill Hewlett on,
 xvi Preface

had dealt with the strategic leadership challenges of the rapidly evolving information
processing industry. To get better access to many retired former top-​level HP execu-
tives and further insight into the strategic challenges HP faced during the tenures of
past CEOs, we invited long-​time HP senior executive Webb McKinney, who had been
one of the protagonists and coauthor of case studies we had written about the HP–​
Compaq merger, to join the research effort. With Webb accepting, it became possible
in the period 2010–​2013 to get interviews with many top-​level executives who had
served under Dave Packard, Bill Hewlett, John Young, and his successor Lew Platt, as
well as with former CEO John Young himself and also again with Carly Fiorina. I, in
turn, was able to secure interviews with Mark Hurd and Léo Apotheker and, in early
2015, with Meg Whitman, who had succeeded Apotheker as HP’s CEO in September
2011 and who had been a guest speaker in the Stanford Executive Program in 2014.
Webb, Philip, and I collected lots of rich, interesting interview data between 2010
and early 2012. Several metaphors were tried to create a preliminary conceptual
framework for our findings, but unfortunately all soon ended up losing their capacity
to make progress. As a result, by early 2012 I was still struggling to clearly and in-
cisively state what the book based on this material was going to be about and what
would set it apart from other books about HP, in particular Charles H. House and
Raymond L. Price’s excellent and exhaustive The HP Phenomenon: Innovation and
Business Transformation (2009). Studying House and Price’s book had actually helped
me to discover the three crucial “HP success principles” that Dave Packard had formu-
lated in a speech to company executives late in his career.7
Webb McKinney had mentioned another speech to HP executives in which Dave
Packard, in his last address to the company, and not long before he passed away, recited
a poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. called “The Deacon’s Masterpiece: Or The
Wonderful One-​Hoss-​Shay.”8 Holmes’s poem recounts the efforts of a fictional deacon
to craft a horse-​drawn carriage (one-​hoss shay) “in such a logical way” that it could
endure for exactly one hundred years. On its one-​hundredth anniversary the shay col-
lapses all at once, as planned.At the time many in the audience did not understand the
significance and poignancy of the poem Packard chose to recite. This story helped me,
however, make a link to my previous research that had revealed how a company can
become locked in with the product-​market environment in which its great strategic
success makes it dominant, but also the difficulties of breaking out of the lock-​in.9 I
realized that this had not happened to HP so far. While Packard’s three success princi-
ples and the one-​hoss shay metaphor were useful to evaluate the differential contribu-
tions made by each of HP’s successive CEOs, these elements did not yet clearly define
a novel concept for framing the book’s potential contribution.
Then serendipity gave a helping hand. While convalescing from a brief illness in
early in 2012, it suddenly occurred to me that the data we had collected about HP’s
evolution could be synthesized in the concept of a “built to become” type of company,
and that the study of successive CEOs could serve to inform the role of strategic lead-
ership in the phenomenon of “corporate becoming.”10 This insight was inspired by Ilya
Prigogine’s research in the physical sciences that had suggested a shift in focus from
phenomena of “being” to phenomena of “becoming.”11 Prigogine’s research had had a
 xvii Preface

big impact on my earlier efforts to create a conceptual framework that integrates cor-
porate entrepreneurship with strategic management.12 I also had begun to revisit and
research more exhaustively Prigogine’s work during a brief stay as a visiting professor
at Cambridge University in 2009.13 In the process of doing this research, I discovered
that other scholars also had begun using Prigogine’s work to explore the idea of orga-
nizational becoming.14
Throughout 2013–​2014, I developed the conceptual foundation for linking the
CEO’s strategic leadership to the phenomenon of corporate becoming. This involved
using some previously developed frameworks to define the key strategic leadership
tasks of the CEO,15 as well as developing several new ones to examine four key aspects
of how the CEO can develop the company’s strategic leadership capability. Part I
(­chapters 1 and 2) presents my efforts to create the book’s conceptual foundation.
These conceptual frameworks were used to restructure the book’s chapters. With
the new chapter structure in place, Webb, Philip, and I used our data to document
for each of HP’s successive CEOs how they discharged the key strategic leadership
tasks and how they developed the company’s strategic leadership capability during
their tenure. Writing these chapters involved multiple revisions. The final versions are
presented in Part II of the book (­chapters 3–​8).
Then in October 2014, potential disaster struck when CEO Meg Whitman
announced that she and the board of directors had decided to split HP in two. How
could such a radical reduction in the size of the company be squared with corporate
becoming? This created a major theoretical conundrum.
Fortunately, serendipity again helped. Struggling with the potential threat of ir-
relevance drove me to realize that this theoretical conundrum could be resolved by
going back to the inchoate key idea of my undergraduate thesis composed almost half
a century ago on the topic of “optimal firm size.”16 Inspired by Galbraith’s ideas about
The New Industrial State, I had stumbled onto Alfred Chandler’s analysis of how major
US-​based firms adapted their organization structure to implement their external
opportunity-​driven diversification strategies, Edith Penrose’s analysis of firms’ internal
entrepreneurial impulse to grow, and Igor Ansoff ’s analytical corporate strategy frame-
work.17 Integrating these novel perspectives had made me realize that a firm’s size at
any given time could be viewed as the byproduct of its growth trajectory and that even
if a firm’s optimal size could be determined at a particular moment in time, it would
most likely be a fleeting optimum because of continuously changing external and in-
ternal conditions. This led me to propose that a better way to think about optimal firm
size was for top management to be concerned with optimally matching strategy and
structure at each point along the firm’s growth trajectory, which would then produce
optimal size as a byproduct. That is where I had left it in 1969.
More than four decades later, this insight turned out to be relevant for the theo-
retical framing of Becoming Hewlett Packard. Thinking more deeply about Whitman’s
strategic decision to split HP in two made me realize that a firm’s growth trajectory
does not necessarily have to incessantly move upward. In fact, it might make strate-
gic sense at some points along the growth trajectory to change the firm’s corporate
strategy and structure to reduce its size and thereby put it onto a new, more adaptive
 xviii╇Preface

growth trajectory. Working out the implications of this insight during most of 2015
led to developing a framework that helps explain the conditions under which top man-
agement may decide to split off certain businesses from the corporate portfolio and
thereby reduce the size of the firm. The two key drivers highlighted in the new frame-
work are (1) changes in interbusiness complementarity; and (2) changes in intrabusi-
ness complexity. This led to rewriting parts of �chapters 1 and 2 of the book, and to
using the new framework in Â�chapter 9 to explain why Whitman’s decision to split HP
in two is consistent with HP’s continued process of becoming, and why most investors
liked this move in 2014 whereas they disliked the prospect of it in 2011.18
Having resolved the theoretical conundrum created by the strategic decision to
split HP in two, the book’s final chapter served to summarize key findings about (1)
the paradox of the integral process of corporate becoming and the conditions that
govern it; (2) the differential strategic leadership contributions of successive CEOs
in sustaining a company’s integral process of becoming; (3) the existential situation
facing a company’s successive CEOs that justified the book’s adopting an empathic
approach; and (4) the crucial role of these successive CEOs in harnessing the com-
pany’s past and driving its future during their tenure. These findings could then be
combined to propose an evolutionary conceptual framework of the role of strategic
leadership in the process of corporate becoming. Part III of the book (�chapters 9 and
10) presents these integrating conceptual efforts and their implications for strategic
leadership.
If all is well that ends well, it remains nevertheless important to acknowledge that
the insights into the role of strategic leadership in corporate becoming presented in
this book are only what Stuart Firestein in his examination of the role of “failure” in
scientific progress calls “a series of provisional findings that iteratively moves us closer
and closer to a truth that may never be fully attained.”19 Like Firestein, I hope that
these insights may be valuable stepping-╉stones for further research even if they end up
being shown to be more wrong than right.

NOTES
1. J. K. Galbraith, The New Industrial State (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1967).
2. R. A. Burgelman and A. S. Grove, “Let Chaos Reign, Then Rein-╉in Chaos—╉Repeatedly:
Managing Strategic Dynamics for Corporate Longevity,” Strategic Management Journal 28,
no. 10 (2007): 965-╉979.
3. C. M. Christensen, The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to
Fail (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1997).
4. See, for instance, J. Gramm, Dear Chairman: Boardroom Battles and the Rise of Shareholder
Activism (New York: Harper, 2016).
5. J. A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (New York: Harper, 1942).
6. J. A. Schumpeter, The Theory of Economic Development (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1934).
7. Charles H. House and Raymond L. Price, The HP Phenomenon: Innovation and Business
Transformation (Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009), 530.
 xix Preface

8. The poem was originally published in The Atlantic Monthly, September 1858, in Holmes’s
regular “The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table” column for that magazine.
9. R. A. Burgelman, “Strategy as Vector and the Inertia of Co-​evolutionary Lock-​in,”
Administrative Science Quarterly 47 (2002): 325–​357.
10. I thought that the idea of built to become could be usefully distinguished from built to
last (see James Collins and Jerry Porras, Built to Last [New York, Harper Books, 1994])
because becoming refers to a dynamic process that is not driven by an ex ante teleological
vision and leaves open the possibility that even a company’s core values may have to
change to make adaptation to radical environmental change possible. (It had always struck
me, for instance, that thousands of tribes that stuck to their core values had nevertheless
disappeared in the course of history.) To avoid potentially confusing readers, however,
the editors wisely suggested dropping “built to become” and keeping the book focused on
“corporate becoming.”
11. I. Prigogine, From Being to Becoming: Time and Complexity in the Physical Sciences (San
Francisco: W.H. Freeman and Company, 1980).
12. R. A. Burgelman, “Corporate Entrepreneurship and Strategic Management: Insights from
a Process Study,” Management Science 29, no. 12 (1983): 1349–​1364.
13. R. A. Burgelman, “Prigogine’s Theory of the Dynamics of Far-​from-​Equilibrium Systems
Informs the Role of Strategic Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Organizational
Evolution,” in C. E. Shalley, M. A. Hitt, and J. Zhou (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Creativity,
Innovation, and Entrepreneurship (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 433–​444.
14. H. Tsoukas and R. Chia, “On Organizational Becoming: Rethinking Organizational
Change,” Organization Science 13, no. 5 (2002): 1.
15. R. A. Burgelman, Strategy is Destiny: How Strategy-​Making Shapes a Company’s Future (New
York: Free Press, 2002).
16. R. A. Burgelman, Optimale Grootte in Bedrijfseconomisch Perpspectief, unpublished licenciate
thesis, Antwerp University, Faculty of Applied Economics (UFSIA), 1969.
17. A. D. ChandlerJr., Strategy and Structure: Chapters in the History of the American
Industrial Enterprise (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1962); E. T. Penrose, The Theory of
the Growth of the Firm (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959); H. I. Ansoff, Corporate
Strategy: An Analytic Approach to Business Policy for Growth and Expansion (New York:
McGraw-​Hill, 1965).
18. See D. Gelles, “Breaking Up Is the New Thing to Do in Silicon Valley,” New York Times,
October 6, 2014. Interestingly, beyond HP, the split-​off phenomenon seemed to be
asserting itself with great force during 2015 and 2016. IBM’s split-​off of its semiconductor
business (it even paid the acquirer), eBay’s split-​off of PayPal, the pressure on EMC to split
off VMWare (now alleviated by EMC having been acquired by Dell), and Xerox’s decision
(in January 2016) to split its enterprise equipment business from its services business are
some of the most prominent examples.
19. S. Firestein, Failure: Why Science is so Successful (Oxford, Oxford University Press,
2016), 174.
 PART I

Corporate Becoming
An Integral Strategic Leadership Process

Robert A. Burgelman
Becoming is the process of incorporating earlier stages into later; or when this is impos-
sible, of handling the conflict between early and late stages as well as one can.
—​Gordon W. Allport, Becoming, 1955 (28)
 1
C O R P O R AT E B E C O M I N G
A N D ST R AT E G I C L E A D E R S H I P

A THOUGHT EXPERIMENT
Suppose Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard came back from the Elysian fields today and
visited the two new corporations that bear their names: HP Inc. and Hewlett Packard
Enterprise. How would they feel about how HP has evolved and what it has become
since their departures?
Chances are that the founders would hardly recognize the two new companies.
For one thing, gone are the original core test and measurement (T&M) businesses—​
the direct descendants of the products the two engineer-​entrepreneurs developed
and manufactured in that famed garage. Those assets were already spun off from
HP in 1999 and owned by a public company called Agilent, and some were spun
off again by Agilent in 2014 (in particular, the core T&M business that the found-
ers started in the garage so that Agilent could focus on life sciences). Hewlett and
Packard might ask why HP’s corporate management did not continue to capitalize
on these leading-​edge technology-​based T&M businesses that dominated their
segments and ended up generating far greater return on investment than most of
HP’s other businesses.1
The founders, however, probably would be favorably impressed that HP’s gigantic
size of yesterday (before 2015) had been cut in half to form the two new companies.
And while they might be somewhat disappointed to find that the consumer-​oriented
new HP Inc. company is now positioned in mostly commodity-​type businesses, they
would be encouraged by its leadership’s intent to re-​energize its capacity to innovate.
They would probably also be impressed by the enterprise-​oriented new company
Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s efforts to become a leading player in the new computing
paradigm called “cloud.”
Poignantly, it is easy to imagine the founders one more time attempting to get a feel
for the culture of the new HP companies by “walking around,” as they did regularly at
company plants and offices all over the world. They would probably be disappointed
to find that transaction-​oriented values, imported from acquisitions and leaders from
outside of HP, have largely replaced the relationship and innovation-­oriented val-
ues of the old “HP Way,” and that the old culture of solidarity and meritocracy they
built over decades has too often given way to opportunism and careerism. Hewlett
and Packard would surely wonder what they could have done differently to preserve

3
 4╇ Corporate Becoming

more of their values at the company they created. Flipping through HP’s annual
reports and news clippings, they might think about the kind of boards of directors
they assembled and the impact these had on the company and its culture after they
retired. They would probably also wonder what they could have done differently to
not make it necessary for the company to go outside the company for CEO leader-
ship four times in a row.
And yet, hard-╉headed businessmen and solid engineers that they were, they prob-
ably would be impressed that HP is still around in the form of two new independent
companies. Moreover, they would probably be gratified to see that while these new
HP companies are struggling to get back to growth, they are still profitable, still attract
excellent people, still have a bedrock of very strong technological competence and
human capital, and still evoke in many in Silicon Valley the feeling that they have the
potential to continue to be great companies.
The founders would probably admit that it does not really matter what they think
and feel about the company that was once theirs. What really matters is that HP’s lon-
gevity be preserved in two new companies that continue to offer employees highly
valued jobs and are a source of innovation and contribution that makes the country
and the world a better place. Rooted in science and engineering, as their thinking al-
ways had been, they would probably return to the Elysian fields with fresh questions
about the forces that drive the evolution of long-╉lived companies, shape them in ways
not anticipatable by their founders, and about new ways to think about what makes
such companies great.
Inspired by the idea of Hewlett and Packard returning to visit their long-╉lived
company, this book addresses several questions that they probably would take back
with them: Why do some companies survive over long periods of time while oth-
ers do not? What makes some long-╉living companies great, and what does “great”
really mean? What is the role of strategy and culture in helping a company live for
many decades over the tenures of successive CEOs? How does top management of
long-╉lived companies balance strategic resource allocation between exploiting exist-
ing business opportunities and generating new ones? What is the role of the board
of directors in helping top management secure the future of the company? And, in
light of recent developments at HP, when does it make strategic sense for a company
to secure its continued longevity by reducing its size through splitting itself into mul-
tiple companies?

CORPORATE LONGEVITY AND GREATNESS

Few companies survive as independent entities for very long periods of time. Of the
top one hundred US-╉based industrial companies listed in Fortune magazine in 1983,
the year HP first cracked into that elite group, only twenty-╉one of those companies
remained in the top one hundred in 2013, the rest having been acquired, dropping in
relative size, or going out of business. But not HP; it continued to rise. This is shown
in Figure 1.1.
 5 Corporate Becoming and Strategic Leadership

Fortune 100 Rank

1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020
0

100

200 Fortune 100 Rank

300

400

500

Figure 1.1 HP’s Progression in Fortune 100 between 1983–​2013.

Source: Created by R. A. Burgelman and P. E. Meza.

The rapid turnover in the Fortune 100 list shows the highly dynamic external environ-
ments that most large corporations face. It is a tough world out there, especially for
tech companies. This dynamism results from industry players, sometimes incumbents
but more often upstart new entrants, changing the rules of the game. Whether implicit
or explicit, these rules of the game usually remain unchallenged for extended periods
of time, giving leading companies enough room to get comfortable and set in their
strategies until their worlds are turned upside down.2
The rapid turnover in the Fortune 100 shows how short life can be for even very
large companies. Contrast this with religious, political, and educational institutions,
which often are imbued with time-​transcending values, and sustained by the faith-
ful efforts of successive generations of members who want them to continue to exist,
for rational and emotional reasons, beyond their stewards’ own lifespans. This is also
true in many family-​owned companies.3 Corporate longevity for its own sake, how-
ever, can feel out of step in publicly owned companies that focus on maximizing
shareholder value, particularly in our time of global competitive dynamics, transient
corporate relationships, and transaction-​motivated interactions between employers
and employees that have lost much appreciation of the value of loyalty.4 (It should
be noted, however, that finance scholars have begun to develop the idea of “loyalty
shares” to reward long-​term investors and to counter the short-​term financial perfor-
mance pressures that cause corporate underinvestment.5)
If longevity is hard to achieve; what about enduring corporate greatness? The
bestselling book Good to Great defined “great” companies as those eleven that for a
period of fifteen years after a major transition were able to achieve average cumula-
tive stock returns at least three times those of the overall stock market.6 The book
concluded that such enduring greatness depends on a certain type of leadership style.
Corporate greatness, however, appears to be even more fleeting than corporate lon-
gevity. By 2007, only three of the eleven great companies profiled in Good to Great
remained great, with the eight others either no longer existing as independent insti-
tutions or now performing at levels below greatness.7 This seems consistent with the
fact that some companies get lucky for an extended period of time.8 But even compa-
nies that are identifiable as great through the statistical analysis of sustained superior
 6╇ Corporate Becoming

performance still face the question of whether their success is based on superior
capabilities or on benefiting from a process of cumulative advantage (e.g., increasing
returns to adoption, or network effects, that create nonlinear winner-╉take-╉all strategic
dynamics).9
This raises the question of what “greatness” really means. In the end greatness is
unavoidably subjective, since the objective measures used to demonstrate it are a mat-
ter of choice. Corporate greatness should perhaps always be considered in terms of
performance measured against the best relevant competitors along multiple dimen-
sions, such as stock price performance, market share, profitability, customer and
employee satisfaction, and the like. A company only lives long enough to become great
if it continues to be able to satisfy its customers to generate the resources necessary
for staying afloat, and can only remain independent if the majority of its shareholders
want it that way.
Company greatness is also somewhat similar to optimal firm size; that is, it is basi-
cally a static measure that is determined at a particular moment in time and is ephem-
eral because in the next moment, as the data suggests, any given firm can (and often
will) fall from greatness. It may therefore be more useful to view company greatness,
like optimal firm size, as the byproduct of a dynamic process.10 Similarly, corporate
greatness can be viewed as the byproduct of a company’s continued strategic efforts to
remain—╉in the words of Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella—╉relevant to customers and
investors.11 Remaining relevant to customers and shareholders can then be viewed as
the necessary and sufficient condition for corporate longevity.
With this in mind, greatness—╉admittedly subjectively—╉is redefined in this book
as a company’s capacity to transform itself throughout its lifetime so as to remain rel-
evant by being able to make fundamental contributions that are highly valued by its
evolving customer base, and that in turn generate sufficient value for its shareholders
to want to support the company’s continued independence. Later in this chapter, we
will see that Dave Packard had deeply grasped this strategic imperative and tirelessly
communicated it to his executives.

A TYPOLOGY OF COMPANY FOUNDING

Company-╉building efforts can be characterized in terms of two dimensions. The first
dimension concerns the initial founders’ purpose: whether the venture’s initial pur-
pose is short-╉term instrumental (primarily serving the financial objectives of the
founders and early employees) or long-╉term institutional (primarily geared toward
building a long-╉living company). It is important to note here that a founder’s initial
purpose may of course change over time. For instance, it is reasonable to assume that
most founders probably start with high hopes of building a company for the long
term, but end up cashing out simply because it does not work out the way they had
envisaged.12 The second dimension concerns adaptive capability: whether the venture
relatively quickly succumbs to the pressures of the external environment or is able to
stay ahead of these pressures (stay relevant) and survives for the long term. This is
shown in Figure 1.2.
 7╇ Corporate Becoming and Strategic Leadership

Founder’s Purpose

Short-term Long-term
Financial Institutional

Short-lived Long-lived
High Company Company
(Built for Exit) (Built to Become)
Adaptive
Capability
Live-to-be Acquired
Low Failed
Company
Company
(or fail)

Figure 1.2╇ A Typology of Company Founding.

Source: Created by R. A. Burgelman.

Figure 1.2 shows four generic types of company-╉building efforts. Failing companies are
ventures that serve (or end up serving) an instrumental purpose but have low adap-
tive capability. The vast majority of start-╉up companies, unfortunately, fall into this
category. Short-╉lived companies are ventures that serve an instrumental purpose but
have sufficiently high adaptive capability that they can survive long enough to secure
a successful exit for the founders and investors. A fairly recent example is Instagram,
a start-╉up company with thirteen employees that was sold to Facebook in 2011 for
$1 billion.13
Live-╉to-╉be-╉acquired companies originate with an institution-╉building purpose but
over time lose the adaptive capability necessary to sustain their independence in
the long run, and eventually get acquired (or fail and disband). HP’s acquisition of
Compaq in 2002 remains a major example. Long-╉lived companies originate from an
institution-╉building purpose and are able to continue to develop the adaptive capabil-
ity necessary to sustain themselves as independent economic institutions for the long
term, sometimes hundreds of years.14 These long-╉lived companies are able to trans-
form themselves multiple times to weather the turbulence of environmental change
and often absorb some of the short-╉lived ventures and live-╉to-╉be-╉acquired companies,
which add diversity and growth opportunities and increase their ability to survive.
These long-╉lived companies and their process of “corporate becoming” is the phenom-
enon of interest of this book.
This book focuses on HP’s process of becoming. By 2016, HP had existed as an
independent company for seventy-╉seven years and had been able to acquire major
companies such as Compaq, which previously had absorbed large companies such as
Tandem Computers and DEC, and EDS. Also, by 2015 HP had been able to trans-
form itself six times and in 2016,15 was working through a seventh, truly watershed
transformation.

CONTEXT DYNAMICS AND CORPORATE BECOMING

Looking at a company’s history involves understanding the continuities, contingen-
cies, and changes in external and internal contexts that the company faces over time.
 8 Corporate Becoming

Continuities are patterns that extend for a long time; by contrast, contingencies are
events that do not form a pattern.16 External continuities (e.g., technological forces,
regulatory laws) as well as internal ones (e.g., the imprint of founders’ values and
approaches beyond their own tenures, the unresolved issues and challenges left to a
successor CEO by his or her predecessor) extend beyond the tenure of any CEO in the
evolution of the firm. Contingencies—​unexpected good luck or bad luck events—​un-
avoidably confront CEOs during their tenures.
Context is formed by the set of changing external and internal forces within which
strategic leadership must operate. Context does not cause events, but determines its
consequences; for instance, slipping on a path in a flat field may result in a strained
ankle or broken leg, but slipping on a path along a hundred-​foot cliff may result in
death.17 As the statesman and historian Henry Kissinger has insightfully observed:

Leaders cannot create the context in which they operate. Their distinctive contribution
consists in operating at the limit of what the given situation permits. If they exceed these
limits, they crash; if they fall short of what is necessary, their policies stagnate. If they
build soundly, they may create a new set of relationships that sustains itself over a histor-
ical period because all parties consider it in their own interest.18

Kissinger’s view about context could be interpreted to imply that leaders must always
take the context as unalterably given, but this would of course be too limited an inter-
pretation.19 Also, leaders must be able to simultaneously take into account and deal
with both the internal and external dimensions of context. Once a leader takes stra-
tegic actions that change the context, however, the consequences, as is widely under-
stood, usually cannot be fully anticipated.20
One important implication of the importance of context is that strategic leader-
ship must be able to operate in unstructured, or at best ill-​structured, situations.21 The
corporate environment is messy: key executives often undertake strategic actions that
may not be well aligned; a company’s most threatening competitor may not be appar-
ent in advance; the players in any industry can make a multitude of strategic moves;
and the results of competitive interaction between industry competitors are not al-
ways predictable. The functioning of the strategic leadership in large, complex organ-
izations is therefore likely to be relatively untidy, and difficult to capture in relatively
simple analytical models.
Changes in internal and external context make useful milestones for studying the
role of strategic leadership in the evolution of a company over time. The changes can
be subtle and hard to perceive as they occur, or they can be glaringly obvious. They are
usually caused by changes to the rules of the game that govern the context in which
firms operate. There are several different types of rules that shape the context dynam-
ics over time.
Normative rules are based on law, cultural norms, ethics, and administrative prin-
ciples. For instance, consider the rule of “fair use” that governed the way in which con-
sumers could copy and share their copyrighted material such as music. Technological
rules are based on the available technical solutions at a particular moment in time.
Another random document with
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was the matter, just as she reached the bottom.

"What ails the child?" said Mother, rather sharply. "The man
would wait no longer, and now the poor woman must go
without her cloak."

"I am very sorry!" answered Amice, meekly. "I was trying to

emulate the example of that blessed young Saint, Sister
Catherine was reading of yesterday; who, when he went up-
stairs, always paused to say a prayer on every step."

I saw Mother's eyes twinkle, and the corners of her mouth

twitch.

"Well, well, I wont scold you, child, but remember the next
time you are sent on an errand that your business is to do
the errand, and try rather to follow the example of St.
Anthony, and be in two places at once."

I saw Amice was mortified. When we went away together

she was silent a little, and I could see she was trying to
keep back her tears. Presently she said:

"Rosamond, I think it is very hard to follow the example of

the Saints. There are so many of them, and they are so
very different."

"Perhaps it would be well to pick out one, and keep him for
a model," said I.

"But how?" asked Amice. "Now, this same saint, for

instance. When he was only five years old, he wanted a
friar's habit, and he cried till he got it."

"He would have cried a long time if he had my mother to

deal with!" said I. "Or rather, I think his crying would have
been cut short rather suddenly."
"Just so!" said Amice. "We were taught to obey our parents
in all things. Then, again, when he was eight years old, he
saw his mother in a red dress, and reproved her severely,
telling her that the color would drag her down to the flames
of hell. Now I think (and I can't help thinking), that Sister
Catherine's way of snubbing and putting down poor Sister
Bridget (though she does say silly things, to be sure), is
worse than wearing a red gown: but suppose I should
reprove her, what do you think would happen?"

"I can guess!" said I, and we both laughed; but Amice

looked very sober again, directly.

"So you see, Rosamond, I don't know what to do, because

whatever Saint you choose for a model, you seem to run
against somebody. And that makes me say I wish there
were not so many."

"If we knew all about our Lady, or one of the Holy

Apostles," said I, doubtfully; "or suppose you should take
St. Clare, or St. Agnes."

"Well, St. Clare did not obey her parents either; she ran
away from her father's house at midnight, and went to St.
Frances!"

"Yes, but that was because she had such a high vocation," I
answered, "and her parents opposed her. I suppose that is
different. Anyhow, Amice, we can do as we are told, and
that is always a comfort. Perhaps it is the safest way for
girls like us."

"If we had our Lord's life, that would be the best of all,"
continued Amice, not paying much attention to my words:
"but then, of course, we never could hope to follow that,
when we cannot even reach the example of Saint Francis
and Saint Clare. Anyhow, I wish I could read it for once—all
of it."

"Why, Amice, how can you say such a thing?" said I, rather
sharply, I am afraid. "Don't you know what Father Fabian
said in his sermon—that it was the reading of the Scriptures
by unlearned men which made all the heresies and schisms
which have come up in Germany and the Low Countries?"

Amice looked so distressed that I was sorry for my words

directly.

"I am sure I don't want to be a heretic, or anything else

that is wrong!" said she, with tears in her eyes. "I would
like to please everybody, but somehow I am always going
wrong and making mistakes, as I did to-day. I keep seeing
that poor woman going over the moors in the cold wind,
without any cloak, and yet I meant no harm."

"I am sure you never mean to be anything but the dearest

girl in the world," said I, kissing her. "As to what happened
to-day, I wouldn't think of it any more."

"I don't see that I can do anything about it now, only to

make it an occasion of humility," says Amice.

"I don't think you can do anything better with it than to let
it alone and think about something else," says I, and so the
matter ended.
 CHAPTER III.

Feast of St. Agnes, April 20.

A YEAR ago at this time I was at home, busily preparing

flowers and wreaths for my sister's bridal, under dear
mother's eye. I knew Alice wanted violets, and Dick and I
went to search for them in the coombe, where the banks
being shady, the violets do longest linger. When we had
filled our baskets with the flowers, which we found in
abundance, both white and blue, we sat down a little on the
moss to listen to the singing of the birds and the lapse of
the water. These gentle sounds, albeit most sweet and
tender, did somewhat dispose us to silence, if not
melancholy. Presently Richard said:

"I wonder where we shall be a year from now, Rosamond?

You know this same spring used to be a favorite haunt of
the Fair Dame of Stanton, my ancestress. They say she
used to see in the bosom of the water, as in a mirror, all
that was to come to pass."
"I can tell pretty well where we shall be a year from now,
without any of the Fair Dame's art," said I. "You know she
was said to be a heretic, if not worse."

"Yes, but I don't believe it!" answered Dick, valiantly. "I

believe she was a good woman, and a good wife. But since
you know so well, tell me where we shall be?"

"You will be in France with my Lord your uncle," said I, "or

else attending him at Court, winning your spurs by brave
deeds, or dancing with fair dames and damsels; and I shall
be at the convent, working of cut-work copes and altar-
cloths in silk and gold; or helping Mother Gertrude dry
herbs, and distil cordials, and make comfits: or studying the
lives of the Saints; or—"

"Be wasting your time and youth on some nonsense or

other," interrupted Richard, who never could bear to hear of
my being a nun. "It is a shame!"

"It was my mother's doing, and I will not hear a word

against it!" said I. "Besides, I don't know why I shouldn't be
happy there as well as anywhere else. A great many nuns
are happy, and beside that, Dick, to be happy is not the
business of life."

Dick received this remark with the grunt which he always

bestows on my wise speeches, and we were silent for a
time. Then Dick said passionately, all at once—pointing to a
chaffinch, a dear little fowl, which sat on a twig singing his
very heart out, "Sweetheart! Sweetheart!" over and over
again:

"Rosamond, nothing shall make me think that yonder bird

does not serve God just as acceptably while he is flitting
about gathering food for his young ones, and singing in the
free air of heaven, as if he were shut behind the bars of a
cage, singing the same song over and over, after the old
bird-catcher's whistle."

"The bird is only a bird," I answered, "and, as Master

Ellenwood often tells us, comparisons are no arguments.
Besides, Dick, I have to go, so where is the use of repining?
My mother has promised for me, and I have promised her
again this very day (and so I had); so where is the use of
an argument?"

"It's a shame!" said Dick, passionately; adding, "If you

cared for me as I do for you, you wouldn't talk so coolly of
its being an end."

Whereat there was nothing to do but to rise and return to

the house.

I don't know why I have written this down, only it is a part

of my life. There can be no harm in it, because Richard and
I can never be anything to each other—not even brother
and sister—because a good religious knows no ties of
natural affection. No doubt the coombe is full this very day
of violets and primroses, and all other sweet flowers, and
the spring is welling up and running over its basin all among
the moss and fern, and the brook liverwort; and I dare say
the very same chaffinch is singing there this minute. There
are violets in our convent garden as well, but they are
planted in a straight bed, and Mother Gabrielle uses the
flowers to make her sirups, and the leaves are gathered for
our sallets. There is a spring, too, but not one bit like that in
the coombe. That boils up out of a deep and wide cleft in
the rock, filling its basin full and running over the stones in
twenty little vagrant streams. Great ferns grow over and
shade it, and leaves drop into it in the autumn, and birds
and wild-wood creatures come to drink of its waters. This
pours in a steady orderly stream from a pipe which sticks
straight out from the wall, and runs down a straight course,
paved and edged with cut stone, into the stew-pond where
we keep our fish.

Still our convent garden is a sweet and pretty place, full of

orderly knots and beds of flowers and herbs, chiefly such as
are good to distil cordials, or to help out our messes on fast
days—rue, and mints, and hyssops, and angelica, and
caraway, and burnet—with abundance of roses, and
poppies, and white lilies, and a long bed of sweet flowers
for the bees.

We have a fine stock of beehives. Then we have plum and

pear and apple trees, and a bed of strawberries. At the end
of the garden are two most ancient elm trees, and under
them a very small, and very, very old chapel of our Lady of
Sorrows. Dear Mother says it is by far the oldest part of the
convent. It is very small, as I said, built of huge stones,
with low heavy arches. Over the altar stands the image of
our Lady, rudely carved in some dark wood. It is a very holy
image, and used to work miracles in old times. I wish it
would again. I should dearly love to see a miracle.

At the back of this chapel, and joining it, so as to be under

the same roof, is another building, very low and massive,
with no windows, but one very narrow slit, close under the
eaves. A heavy iron-studded door opens into it from the
chapel itself. Mother Gertrude told me one day that it
contained the staircase leading to a burial vault under the
chapel, now never used, and that it had not been opened
for years and years.

The Sisters are not fond of this shrine, holy as it is, and I
think they are afraid of it. Indeed I know Sister Bridget told
me that if an unfaithful nun were to watch there over night,
she would be found dead on the floor in the morning—if
indeed a ghost or demon did not arise from the vault and
drag her down to a living death below.

"I should not think a ghost would dare to come into the
sacred place!" said Amice.

"Evil spirits have power over the unfaithful, wherever they

are—remember that, child!" said Sister Bridget, solemnly.

"And over the faithful too, sometimes," said Amice, who is

as usual reading the lives of Saints. "I am sure St. Frances
was dreadfully disturbed by them."

"Power to disturb, but not to destroy them, child. But

prayers offered at that shrine have great efficacy for the
deliverance of souls from purgatory," said old Mother Mary
Monica, who is the oldest person in the house, and very
fond of the company of us young ones. "If any one had a
friend in purgatory, and should watch all night in prayer
before that image, it would go far to deliver him."

"Do you really think so, Mother?" I asked.

"Think so, child! I know it for a truth. The blessed Saint

Ethelburga herself tried it, and was assured by a vision and
a miracle that her prayers were granted. Eh dear, I could
tell you many stories of miracles, my daughters. They used
to be plenty in my young days. Why, I was converted by a
miracle myself."

"Tell us about it, dear Mother, will you?" said Amice and I
both together; and Amice added, "See, here is a nice seat,
and the warm sun is good for your pains, you know."

So she sat down, the good old soul, and Amice and I on
stones at her feet, and she told us the tale. I will set it
down just as I remember it.
"You must know, my children, that I was a giddy young girl
in attendance on the Queen—not the Queen that now is, but
Queen Elizabeth, wife of Henry the Seventh, this King's
father—when I went with my mistress to make a retreat at
the convent of the poor Clares, in London—"

"The same that Sister Catherine is always praising," said I.

"Yes, the very same; but don't you put me out. Where was
I?"

"Where you went with the Queen to make a retreat, dear

Mother."

"O yes. Well, I had been a giddy girl, as I told you, but I
had been somewhat sobered of late, because my cousin
Jack, whom my father always meant I should wed, had
been on the wrong side in the late troubles, and was in
hiding at that time. Now, I liked Jack right well, and was
minded to marry none other; but I was a King's ward, my
father being dead, and I having a good fortune. So I had a
many suitors, and I knew the King was favorable to a
knight, Sir Edward Peckham, of Somerset, who had come to
him with help just at the right time. Now, I wanted nobody
but Jack; but of all my suitors there was none that I
misliked so much as Sir Edward Peckham!"

"Why?" asked I, much interested.

"Because I could not abide him, child. That was reason

enough. Well, things being even in this shape, I was glad
enough when my mistress made her retreat in the convent
of the Poor Clares, and chose me to attend on her, out of all
her train. That was a strict order, children. Matins at one
o'clock in the morning—not overnight, as we have them
here—no food till dinner at eleven, and no flesh meat even
on feast days—almost perpetual silence! Well, it was always
and ever my way to fall in with whatever was going on, let
it be what it might; so I fasted and prayed with the best,
and kept all the hours, till I was so tired I could hardly
stand. In the midst of it all came a messenger to my
mistress from the King, bidding her return to the Court in
three days and bring me with her, for the King was minded
that my marriage should no longer be put off.

"Children, I was like one distracted, and I was all but ready
to cast myself away, body and soul. The Mother Superior
marked my grief, and I was won to tell her the whole. She
was an austere woman—not one bit like our Mother—but
she was very kind to me in my trouble—"

"I am sure our dear Mother Superior is a saint, if ever there

was one," said I.

"That she is, that she is, child; but there may be a
difference in saints, you know. Well, Mother Superior pitied
my grief, and soothed me, and when I was quieted like, she
councilled me to watch all night before a shrine in which
were some very holy relics—specially part of the veil of St.
Clare, our blessed founder."

"'Perhaps the Saint may take pity on you and show you the
way out of your present troubles,' said she. 'Fast this day
from all food, my daughter, and this night I will myself
conduct you to the shrine where you are to watch.'"

"Well, children, I did fast and say my rosary all the rest of
the day, till I was ready to drop; and at nine at night the
Mother Superior led me to a little chapel off the church,
where was the shrine of St. Clare. It was all dark—only
looking toward the church I could just see the glimmer of
the ever-burning lamp, before the Holy Sacrament of the
Altar. Here she left me, and here I was to kneel till daylight,
saying my prayers and the seven psalms."

"I don't see how you could kneel so long," said Amice.

"I might lie prone a part of the time, if I would," replied

Mother Mary Monica, "and so indeed I did. I don't know
what time it was—somewhere before Matins, and I know
not whether overcome with fatigue I had not dozed a little,
when I was waked by a bright light. I raised myself on my
knees, and looking toward the altar, I saw the figure of St.
Clare surrounded by a clear but mild radiance, and holding
out to me in her hand a nun's veil, while a voice of heavenly
sweetness, said to me these words: 'Here, my child, is thy
only refuge.' The light faded away, and I sunk down—in a
swoon this time, for when some of the Sisters came to seek
me at prime, they found me pale and lifeless, while—mark,
my daughters—on my head was laid that most sacred relic,
the veil of St. Clare—yes, on this unworthy head the
blessed veil was laid."

We both looked at the good Mother in a kind of awe.

"Well, I told the good Sisters and my mistress what I had

seen. There could be no doubt after that in my mind,
especially as two or three days after I had certain news of
Jack's death. The King would not hear of my profession at
first, but the Prior of the Franciscans took my part, and his
Majesty would not have liked setting the whole of the Gray
Friars against him; so he gave way, and even paid over my
portion, which must have gone hard, for his blessed Majesty
was fond of money; and Sir Edward went home riding
alone, with a flea in his ear, instead of a bride by his side.
Marry him, indeed, with his thin legs and his long lean jaws!
So that is the way I was converted, my children, and got
my own way, by the help of the Blessed St. Clare, to whom
I have always had a particular devotion ever since. And who
knows what miracles might be vouchsafed to you, if you
were to watch all night before the shrine of our Lady?"

We had no time for any more talk just then, but ever since I
have been turning over in my mind what Mother Mary
Monica said. It does seem dreadful to me—the thought of
watching all night and alone in that dreary place without a
light. To be sure, the moon is at the full, and would shine
directly into the great window, but then those dreadful
vaults, and Sister Bridget's story do so run in my head.
Every time the wind shook the ivy or whistled in the
loopholes of the stones, I should fancy it a rustle among the
graves below, or the grating of that heavy door on its
hinges. And then, so cold and damp.

Wretch that I am, to weigh these things one moment in the

balance against my dear mother's soul! I feel sure that she
could not have died in mortal sin, but to pass without the
sacraments, without one moment's warning! Oh, it is
dreadful! And then her marrying instead of taking the veil.
That I think troubles dear Mother Superior worse than
anything. Yes, I am quite resolved. I will watch this very
night before the shrine in the garden chapel; but I will tell
nobody of my resolve, save Amice and Mother Gertrude. I
don't want the whole flock exclaiming, pitying or praising
me, or hinting at my setting up for a saint, as some of them
do.

[Of course, being now enlightened by Holy Scripture, I do

not believe that my dear mother was benefitted by my
watching, nor indeed that she needed such benefit; but I
will ever maintain that the exertion to overcome my own
fears (which were very terrible), for my mother's sake, was
of great service to me. 'Twas a true act of self-sacrifice,
though done in ignorance, and that not to pile up a stock of
merit for myself, but to do good to another.]

CHAPTER IV.

Feast of St. Catherine, April 29.

THIS is the first time I have been able to write since my

watching at our Lady's shrine, at which time I took such a
chill and rheum as have kept me laid up ever since. Mother
Gertrude was much opposed thereto, but could say nothing
against it, seeing that Mother Superior had given her
consent.

"If she wants to send the child after her mother, she has
taken the next way to do it," I heard her mutter to herself.

"Why, dear Mother, should you have such fears for me," I
asked. "I have lately confessed (and so I had the day
before), and I am sure I am not false to my vows, because
I have never taken any. Why, then, should the demon have
power over me?"

"I was not thinking of the demon, child, but of the damp,"
answered Mother Gertrude, in her matter-of-fact way.
"However I say no more. I know how to be obedient, after
all these years. And nobody can deny but it is a good
daughter's heart which moves thee, my child, and so God
and all the Saints bless thee."

Amice would have shared my watch, only it was needful one

should go alone; but she promised to watch in her cell. She
went with me to the chapel door, as did Mother Gertrude,
and we said some prayers together. Then, as the hour of
nine tolled, they kissed me and went their way, leaving me
to my solitary watch and ward.

Oh, what a lone and long night it was! I did not mind it so
much before midnight, for the moon shone fair into the
great east window, and two nightingales, in the garden
outside, answered each other most melodiously from side to
side. My mother ever loved the nightingale above all other
birds, because she said its song reminded her of her young
days in the midland of England. They are rare visitors with
us. But, as I said, dear mother ever loved this bird's song,
and now their voices seemed to come as a message from
herself, in approval of what I was doing. I knelt on the cold
stones, before our Lady's shrine, saying my rosary, and
repeating of Psalms, and the first two hours did not seem so
very long. But the birds stopped singing. The moon moved
on her course, so that the chapel was left almost in
darkness. The south-west wind rose and brought with it all
kinds of dismal sounds, now moaning and sobbing at the
casement, and shaking it as if to gain an entrance; now, as
it seemed, whispering in the vaults under my feet, as if the
ghosts might be holding a consultation as to the best way of
surprising me. Anon, the great heavy door of which I have
before spoken, did a little jar on its hinges, and from behind
it came, as it seemed, the rustling of wings, and then a
thrilling cry as of a soul in pain.

I felt my blood grow cold, and my flesh creep, and my head

swim. But 'tis not the custom of our house for the women
more than the men to give way to fear, and I was
determined I would not be overcome. I said stoutly to
myself, "That sobbing and whispering is of the wind—those
wings are the wings of bats or owls, which have found
refuge in the old tower—that is the cry of the little white
owl, which I have heard a hundred times at home—that low
roar is the rote of the surf which we ever hear at night
when the wind is south-west."

So I reasoned with myself, and then to calm myself still

farther, I began to repeat the Psalms, of which I know the
greater part by heart, thanks to Master Ellenwood,
beginning with the Psalm, "Beati, quorum." And here a
strange thing happened to me, for no sooner had I repeated
the words, "Whoso putteth his trust in the Lord, mercy
embraceth him on every side," than there came over me
such a wonderful sweetness and confidence as I am not
able to describe. I seemed to feel that I was in the very
house of God, where no harm could come to me, nor any
evil thing hurt me. And 'twas not only for myself that I felt
this assurance, but for my dear mother also. "If ever
woman did put her trust in God, I am sure she did so," I
said to myself, "and therefore, wherever she is, I have His
own word for believing her to be embraced in the arms of
His mercy."

And with that I went to prayer again, for my father and

brother, and for Alice and her husband, and her young
babe, and then for poor Dick. And (I know not if right or
wrong) I used no form of words, but did pour out my soul
almost as freely as if I had been talking alone with mother
in her closet, when kneeling beside her, with my arms on
her lap, she used graciously to encourage me to pour out all
my thoughts and fancies.

If that had been all, there had been no great harm done,
mayhap; but from praying for Dick, I fell to thinking of him,
and recalling all our passages together, from the early days
when my father used to set me behind him on the old pony,
and when we used to build forts and castles on the sand of
the shore, to our last sad parting, almost a year ago.

'Twas very wrong to indulge such thoughts in such a sacred

place, and that I knew, and did constantly strive to bring
my mind into a better frame. But the more I tried the more
I wandered, and at last I believe I dropped asleep. I could
not have slept long, when I was waked by the most horrid
screams and cries—now like those of a young child, now like
a woman in fits, now like the ravings of a madman, all
seemingly in the chapel itself. I fell prostrate on my face, at
the same moment that something rushed by me with a
great noise, closely pursued by something else, which
brushed me as it passed.

Now, though terribly scared, I yet felt my spirit rise as I

discovered that the thing had a material existence; and
though the cold sweat stood on my forehead, and my heart
seemed all but to stop beating, I raised myself once more
on my knees and looked around. My eyes had by this time
grown used to the dim light, and I could see, crouched on
the very step of the altar, a dark creature, which looked at
me with green fiery eyes. Then it came to me, and I all but
laughed aloud.

"Puss, Puss!" said I.

"Mieeo!" answered a friendly voice, and poor old Tom, our
convent cat, came to me, rubbing his head, and purring in
quite an ecstasy of joyful surprise.

I saw in a moment how it was. Tom is a regular Lollard of a

cat, and cares no more for the Church than the cowhouse—
indeed Sister Catherine once found him sitting on the high
altar, and would have slain him, had not Mother Superior
interfered. He had been entertaining a select party of his
own friends in the Lady Chapel, and some cause of dispute
arising, he had chased them all out, and remained master
of the field.

I took the old fellow in my arms, and caressed him, and he

bumped his head against my face, making his prettiest
noises. Then I rose and walked to and fro to warm myself a
little, for it was very chill, and tried once more to bring my
thoughts in order by repeating my favorite Psalm, though
not with as much comfort: as before, because of the sin I
had committed by thinking of Dick when I should have been
praying. However, at the words, "I said I will confess my
sins unto the Lord," I found consolation, for I thought, "then
I need not wait to confess to Father Fabian, but can make
my confession now, in this place."

So I did, and then once more repeating my rosary, I sat

down on a rude bench which was there, to rest a few
moments. That was the last of my meditations and prayers,
for I fell fast asleep, with Puss in my lap, and slept till I was
waked by the sun shining into the great east window. I was
very sleepy, and could hardly make out where I was; but,
however, I said my prayers once more, and then Mother
Gertrude came to seek me, and make me go to bed.

Ever since then, my mind has been wonderfully calmed and

comforted about my mother. I seem to see her, embraced
by mercy on every side, and entered into her rest. So I do
not grudge my cold, though it has kept me in bed ten days,
during which time Mother Gertrude has fed me with possets
and sirups, and good things more than I can eat.

This morning I made a full confession to Father Fabian of

my wandering thoughts during my night watch, and the
rest. The good old man was very kind, and gave me light
penance. I asked him what I must do to prevent such
wanderings in future.

"I will consider of that," said he. "You are a Latin scholar,
and can write a good hand, they tell me."

I assured him that I could write fair and plain, and had a
good knowledge of Latin, so that I could read and write it
with ease.

"Ah, well!" said he. "We must find some way to turn these
gifts to account. Meantime, daughter, be busy in whatever
you find to do whereby you can help others; say your
psalms, and meditate on them, and never trouble thyself
about the devil."

'Twas an odd saying, methought, for a priest. I told Amice

all about my night watch, as I do tell her everything.

"Do you really think—" said she, and then she stopped.

"Well, do I really think what?" I asked, seeing she did not

continue.

"Do you think you have any ground for your confidence
about your mother, from that verse in the Psalm?"

I felt hurt for a minute, and I suppose my face showed it,

for Amice added, "Don't be displeased, Rosamond. I only
ask because it seems almost too good to be true. If you
should find what seemed to be a precious pearl, you would
wish to know whether it really was a pearl, or only an
imitation, wouldn't you?"

"To be sure," I answered, and then I considered a little.

"Yes, I do think I have ground for my confidence, though I

am not quite sure I can explain it. You know, Amice, the
Psalms are inspired—a part of the word of God, and
therefore, surely, their promises are to be taken as true.
The Psalm says, 'Whoso putteth his trust in the Lord, mercy
embraceth him on every side.' Now, I know my dear mother
did put her trust in the Lord, if woman ever did in this
world, and, therefore, I am at ease for her, though she died
without the Sacraments, which was not her fault."

"You used your night watch to good purpose, if you thought

out all this," said Amice.

"I did not think it out—it came to me," said I.

"Came to you—how?" asked Amice.

"I can't tell you," I answered, I am afraid, a little

impatiently. "I am not used to taking all my thoughts and
feelings to pieces, as you do. I only know that it seemed to
come to me from outside my own mind—to be breathed into
my heart, as somebody might whisper in my ear."

"It is very lovely," said Amice, with a sigh. "It is like some of
the visions of the Saints. I think, Rosamond, you will be a
Saint, like St. Clare or St. Catherine."

"I don't believe it," said I. "It is a great deal more in your
way than mine."
We were busy in the garden while we were talking,
gathering rosemary and violets for Mother Gertrude to
distil. Amice had her lap full of rosemary, and she sat down
and began pulling it into little bits.

"Rosamond," said she, presently, looking about her, and

speaking in a low tone, "do you really like the notion of
being a nun?"

"To tell you the truth, I never ask myself whether I like it or
not," I answered her. "What is the use? I had no choice in
the matter myself. Here I am, and I must needs make the
best of it. There would be little profit in my asking myself
whether I really liked to be a woman instead of a man. I
like being here in the garden, pulling flowers for Mother
Gertrude, and I like taking care of the books, dusting them
and reading a bit here and there, and I like singing in the
church, and working for the poor folk, though I should like
still better to teach them to work for themselves."

"I suppose, of course, it is the highest life to which one can

obtain!" said Amice, thoughtfully. "And yet I suppose it
must have been meant that some people should marry and
bring up families."

"I suppose it must, since without some such arrangement,

the race of religious must come to an end before long," said
I.

"Of course!" continued Amice, in the same musing tone.

"You know St. Augustine had a mother, and so did St.
Frances!"

"Did you ever hear of any one who had not?" said I,
laughing. "But to return your question upon yourself, Amice,
how do you like the notion of being a nun?"