On the day I was born we bought six hair-bottomed chairs, and in our little house it was an event, the first great victory in a woman‟s long campaign; how they had been laboured for, the pound-note and the thirty threepenny-bits they cost, what anxiety there was about the purchase, the show they made in possession of the west room, my father‟s unnatural coolness when he brought them in (but his face was white)-I so of-ten heard the tale...