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Stepping Heavenward

by E. Prentiss · English · Gutenberg #2515 · 518,662 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Stepping Heavenward

Author: E. Prentiss


        
Release date: February 1, 2001 [eBook #2515]
                Most recently updated: March 26, 2017

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2515


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STEPPING HEAVENWARD ***








Stepping Heavenward

by Mrs. E. Prentiss




Chapter 1

I.

January 15, 1831.

How dreadfully old I am getting! Sixteen! Well, I don't see as I can
help it. There it is in the big Bible in father's own hand:
"Katherine, born Jan. 15, 1815."

I meant to get up early this morning, but it looked dismally cold out
of doors, and felt delightfully warm in bed. So I covered myself up,
and made ever so many good resolutions.

I determined, in the first place, to begin this Journal. To be sure,
I have begun half a dozen, and got tired of them after a while. Not
tired of writing them, but disgusted with what I had to say of
myself. But this time I mean to go on, in spite of everything. It
will do me good to read it over, and see what a creature I am.

Then I resolved to do more to please mother than I have done.

And I determined to make one more effort to conquer my hasty temper.
I thought, too, I would be self-denying this winter, like the people
one reads about in books. I fancied how surprised and pleased
everybody would be to see me so much improved!

Time passed quickly amid these agreeable thoughts, and I was quite
startled to hear the bell ring for prayers. I jumped up in a great
flurry and dressed as quickly as I could. Everything conspired
together to plague me. I could not find a clean collar, or a
handkerchief. It is always just so. Susan is forever poking my things
into out-of-the-way places! When at last I went down, they were all
at breakfast.

"I hoped you would celebrate your birthday, dear, by coming down in
good season," said mother.

I do hate to be found fault with, so I fired up in an instant.

"If people hide my things so that I can't find them, of course I have
to be late," I said. And I rather think I said it in a very cross
way, for mother sighed a little. I wish mother wouldn't sigh. I would
rather be called names out and out.

The moment breakfast was over I had to hurry off to school. Just as I
was going out mother said, "Have you your overshoes, dear?"

"Oh, mother, don't hinder me! I shall be late," I said. "I don't need
overshoes."

"It snowed all night, and I think you do need them," mother said.

"I don't know where they are. I hate overshoes. Do let me go,
mother," I cried. "I do wish I could ever have my own way."

"You shall have it now, my child," mother said, and went away.

Now what was the use of her calling me "my child" in such a tone, I
should like to know.

I hurried off, and just as I got to the door of the schoolroom it
flashed into my mind that I had not said my prayers! A nice way to
begin on one's birthday, to be sure! Well, I had not time. And
perhaps my good resolutions pleased God almost as much as one of my
rambling stupid prayers could. For I must own I can't make good
prayers. I can't think of anything to say. I often wonder what mother
finds to say when she is shut up by the hour together.

I had a pretty good time at school. My teachers praised me, and
Amelia seemed so fond of me! She brought me a birthday present of a
purse that she had knit for me herself, and a net for my hair. Nets
are just coming into fashion. It will save a good deal of time my
having this one. Instead of combing and combing and combing my old
hair to get it glossy enough to suit mother, I can just give it one
twist and one squeeze and the whole thing will be settled for the
day.

Amelia wrote me a dear little note, with her presents. I do really
believe she loves me dearly. It is so nice to have people love you!

When I got home mother called me into her room. She looked as if she
had been crying. She said I gave her a great deal of pain by my
self-will and ill temper and conceit.

"Conceit!" I screamed out. "Oh, mother, if you only knew how horrid I
think I am!"

Mother smiled a little. Then she went on with her list till she made
me out the worst creature in the world. I burst out crying, and was
running off to my room, but she made me come back and hear the rest.
She said my character would be essentially formed by the time I
reached my twentieth year, and left it to me to say if I wished to be
as a woman what I was now as a girl. I felt sulky, and would not
answer. I was shocked to think I had got only four years in which to
improve, but after all a good deal could be done in that time. Of
course I don't want to be always exactly what I am now.

Mother went on to say that I had in me the elements of a fine
character if I would only conquer some of my faults. "You are frank
and truthful," she said, "and in some things conscientious. I hope
you are really a child of God, and are trying to please Him. And it
is my daily prayer that you may become a lovely, loving, useful
woman."

I made no answer. I wanted to say something, but my tongue wouldn't
move. I was angry with mother, and angry with myself. At last
everything came out all in a rush, mixed up with such floods of tears
that I thought mother's heart would melt, and that she would take
back what she had said.

"Amelia's mother never talks so to her!" I said. "She praises her,
and tells her what a comfort she is to her. But just as I am trying
as hard as I can to be good, and making resolutions, and all that,
you scold me and discourage me!"

Mother's voice was very soft and gentle as she asked, "Do you call
this 'scolding,' my child?"

"And I don't like to be called conceited," I went on. "I know I am
perfectly horrid, and I am just as unhappy as I can be."

"I am very sorry for you, dear," mother replied. "But you must bear
with me. Other people will see your faults, but only your mother will
have the courage to speak of them. Now go to your own room, and wipe
away the traces of your tears that the rest of the family may not
know that you have been crying on your birthday." She kissed me but I
did not kiss her. I really believe Satan himself hindered me. I ran
across the hall to my room, slammed the door, and locked myself in. I
was going to throw myself on the bed and cry till I was sick. Then I
should look pale and tired, and they would all pity me. I do like so
to be pitied! But on the table, by the window, I saw a beautiful new
desk in place of the old clumsy thing I had been spattering and
spoiling so many years. A little note, full of love, said it was from
mother, and begged me to read and reflect upon a few verses of a
tastefully bound copy of the Bible, which accompanied it every day of
my life. "A few verses," she said, "carefully read and pondered,
instead of a chapter or two read for mere form's sake." I looked at
my desk, which contained exactly what I wanted, plenty of paper,
seals, wax and pens. I always use wax. Wafers are vulgar. Then I
opened the Bible at random, and lighted on these words:

"Watch, therefore, for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come."
There was nothing very cheering in that. I felt a real repugnance to
be always on the watch, thinking I might die at any moment. I am sure
I am not fit to die. Besides I want to have a good time, with nothing
to worry me. I hope I shall live ever so long. Perhaps in the course
of forty or fifty years I may get tired of this world and want to
leave it. And I hope by that time I shall be a great deal better than
I am now, and fit to go to heaven.

I wrote a note to mother on my new desk, and thanked her for it I
told her she was the best mother in the world, and that I was the
worst daughter. When it was done I did not like it, and so I wrote
another. Then I went down to dinner and felt better. We had such a
nice dinner! Everything I liked best was on the table. Mother had not
forgotten one of all the dainties I like. Amelia was there too.
Mother had invited her to give me a little surprise. It is bedtime
now, and I must say my prayers and go to bed. I have got all chilled
through, writing here in the cold. I believe I will say my prayers in
bed, just for this once. I do not feel sleepy, but I am sure I ought
not to sit up another moment.

JAN. 30.-Here I am at my desk once more. There is a fire in my room,
and mother is sitting by it, reading. I can't see what book it is,
but I have no doubt it is Thomas A Kempis. How she can go on reading
it so year after year, I cannot imagine. For my part I like something
new. But I must go back to where I left off.

That night when I stopped writing, I hurried to bed as fast as I
could, for I felt cold and tired. I remember saying, "Oh, God, I am
ashamed to pray," and then I began to think of all the things that
had happened that day, and never knew another thing till the rising
bell rang and I found it was morning. I am sure I did not mean to go
to sleep. I think now it was wrong for me to be such a coward as to
try to say my prayers in bed because of the cold. While I was writing
I did not once think how I felt. Well, I jumped up as soon as I heard
the bell, but found I had a dreadful pain in my side, and a cough.
Susan says I coughed all night. I remembered then that I had just
such a cough and just such a pain the last time I walked in the snow
without overshoes. I crept back to bed feeling about as mean as I
could. Mother sent up to know why I did not come down, and I had to
own that I was sick. She came up directly looking so anxious! And
here I have been shut up ever since; only to day I am sitting up a
little. Poor mother has had trouble enough with me; I know I have
been cross and unreasonable, and it was all my own fault that I was
ill. Another time I will do as mother says.

JAN. 31.-How easy it is to make good resolutions, and how easy it is
to break them! Just as I had got so far, yesterday, mother spoke for
the third time about my exerting myself so much. And just at that
moment I fainted away, and she had a great time all alone there with
me. I did not realize how long I had been writing, nor how weak I
was. I do wonder if I shall ever really learn that mother knows more
than I do!

Feb. 17.-It is more than a month since I took that cold, and here I
still am, shut up in the house. To be sure the doctor lets me go down
stairs, but then he won't listen to a word about school. Oh, dear!
All the girls will get ahead of me.

This is Sunday, and everybody has gone to church. I thought I ought
to make a good use of the time while they were gone, so I took the
Memoir of Henry Martyn, and read a little in that.

I am afraid I am not much like him. Then I knelt down and tried to
pray. But my mind was full of all sorts of things, so I thought I
would wait till I was in a better frame. At noon I disputed with
James about the name of an apple. He was very provoking, and said he
was thankful he had not got such a temper as I had. I cried, and
mother reproved him for teasing me, saying my illness had left me
nervous and irritable. James replied that it had left me where it
found me, then. I cried a good while, lying on the sofa, and then I
fell asleep. I don't see as I am any the better for this Sunday, it
has only made me feel unhappy and out of sorts. I am sure I pray to
God to make me better, and why doesn't He?

Feb. 20.-It has been quite a mild day for the season, and the doctor
said I might drive out. I enjoyed getting the air very much. I feel
just well as ever, and long to get back to school. I think God has
been very good to me in making me well again, and wish I loved Him
better. But, oh, I am not sure I do love Him! I hate to own it to
myself, and to write it down here, but I will. I do not love to pray.
I am always eager to get it over with and out of the way so as to
have leisure to enjoy myself. I mean that this is usually so. This
morning I cried a good deal while I was on my knees, and felt sorry
for my quick temper and all my bad ways. If I always felt so, perhaps
praying would not be such a task. I wish I knew whether anybody
exactly as bad as I am ever got to heaven at last. I have read ever
so many memoirs, and they were all about people who were too good to
live, and so died; or else went on a mission. I am not at all like
any of them.

March 26.-I have been so busy that I have not said much to you, you
poor old journal, you, have I? Somehow I have been behaving quite
nicely lately. Everything has gone on exactly to my mind. Mother has
not found fault with me once, and father has praised my drawings and
seemed proud of me. He says he shall not tell me what my teachers say
of me lest it should make me vain. And once or twice when he has met
me singing and frisking about the house he has kissed me and called
me his dear little Flibbertigibbet, if that's the way to spell it.
When he says that I know he is very fond of me. We are all very happy
together when nothing goes wrong. In the long evenings we all sit
around the table with our books and our work, and one of us reads
aloud. Mother chooses the book and takes her turn in reading. She
reads beautifully. Of course the readings do not begin till the
lessons are all learned. As to me, my lessons just take no time at
all. I have only to read them over once, and there they are. So I
have a good deal of time to read, and I devour all the poetry I can
get hold of. I would rather read "Pollok's Course of Time" than read
nothing at all.

APRIL 2.-There are three of mother's friends living near us, each
having lots of little children. It is perfectly ridiculous how much
those creatures are sick. They send for mother if so much as a pimple
comes out on one of their faces. When I have children I don't mean to
have such goings on. I shall be careful about what they eat, and keep
them from getting cold, and they will keep well of their own accord.
Mrs. Jones has just sent for mother to see her Tommy. It was so
provoking. I had coaxed her into letting me have a black silk apron;
they are all the fashion now, embroidered in floss silk. I had drawn
a lovely vine for mine entirely out of my own head, and mother was
going to arrange the pattern for me when that message came, and she
had to go. I don't believe anything ails the child! a great chubby
thing!

April 3.-Poor Mrs. Jones! Her dear little Tommy is dead! I stayed at
home from school to-day and had all the other children here to get
them out of their mother's way. How dreadfully she must feel! Mother
cried when she told me how the dear little fellow suffered in his
last moments. It reminded her of my little brothers who died in the
same way, just before I was born. Dear mother! I wonder I ever forget
what troubles she has had, and am not always sweet and loving. She
has gone now, where she always goes when she feels sad, straight to
God. Of course she did not say so, but I know mother.

April 25.-I have not been down in season once this week. I have
persuaded mother to let me read some of Scott's novels, and have sat
up late and been sleepy in the morning. I wish I could get along with
mother as nicely as James does. He is late far oftener than I am, but
he never gets into such scrapes about it as I do. This is what
happens. He comes down when it suits him.

Mother begins.-"James, I am very much displeased with you."

James.-"I should think you would be, mother."

Mother, mollified.-"I don't think you deserve any breakfast."

James, hypocritically.-"No, I don't think I do, mother."

Then mother hurries off and gets something extra for his breakfast.
Now let us see how things go on when I am late.

Mother.-"Katherine" (she always calls me Katherine when she is
displeased, and spells it with a K), "Katherine, you are late again;
how can you annoy your father so?"

Katherine.-"Of course I don't do it to annoy father or anybody else.
But if I oversleep myself, it is not my fault."

Mother.-"I would go to bed at eight o'clock rather than be late as
often as you. How should you like it if I were not down to prayers?"

Katherine, muttering.-"Of course that is very different. I don't see
why I should be blamed for oversleeping any more than James. I get
all the scoldings."

Mother sighs and goes off.

I prowl round and get what scraps of breakfast I can.

May 12.-The weather is getting perfectly delicious. I am sitting with
my window open, and my bird is singing with all his heart. I wish I
was as gay as he is.

I have been thinking lately that it was about time to begin on some
of those pieces of self-denial I resolved on upon my birthday. I
could not think of anything great enough for a long time. At last an
idea popped into my head. Half the girls at school envy me because
Amelia is so fond of me, and Jane Underhill, in particular, is just
crazy to get intimate with her. But I have kept Amelia all to myself.
To-day I said to her, Amelia, Jane Underhill admires you above all
things. I have a good mind to let you be as intimate with her as you
are with me. It will be a great piece of self-denial, but I think it
is my duty. She is a stranger, and nobody seems to like her much.

"You dear thing, you!" cried Amelia, kissing me. "I liked Jane
Underhill the moment I saw her. She has such a sweet face and such
pleasant manners. But you are so jealous that I never dared to show
how I liked her. Don't be vexed, dearie; if you are jealous it is
your only fault!"

She then rushed off, and I saw her kiss that girl exactly as she
kisses me!

This was in recess. I went to my desk and made believe I was
studying. Pretty soon Amelia came back.

"She is a sweet girl," she said, "and only to think! She writes
poetry! Just hear this! It is a little poem addressed to me. Isn't
it nice of her?"

I pretended not to hear her. I was as full of all sorts of horrid
feelings as I could hold. It enraged me to think that Amelia, after
all her professions of love to me, should snatch at the first chance
of getting a new friend. Then I was mortified because I was enraged,
and I could have torn myself to pieces for being such a fool as to
let Amelia see how silly I was.

"I don't know what to make of you, Katy," she said, putting her arms
round me. "Have I done anything to vex you? Come, let us make up and
be friends, whatever it is. I will read you these sweet verses; I am
sure you will like them."

She read them in her clear, pleasant voice.

"How can you have the vanity to read such stuff?" I cried.

Amelia colored a little.

"You have said and written much more flattering things to me," she
replied. "Perhaps it has turned my head, and made me too ready to
believe what other people say." She folded the paper, and put it into
her pocket. We walked home together, after school, as usual, but
neither of us spoke a word. And now here I sit, unhappy enough. All
my resolutions fail. But I did not think Amelia would take me at my
word, and rush after that stuck-up, smirking piece.

May 20.-I seem to have got back into all my bad ways again. Mother is
quite out of patience with me. I have not prayed for a long time. It
does not do any good.

May 21.-It seems this Underhill thing is here for health, though she
looks as well as any of us. She is an orphan, and has been adopted by
a rich old uncle, who makes a perfect fool of her. Such dresses and
such finery as she wears! Last night she had Amelia there to tea,
without inviting me, though she knows I am her best friend. She gave
her a bracelet made of her own hair. I wonder Amelia's mother lets
her accept presents from strangers. My mother would not let me. On
the whole, there is nobody like one's own mother. Amelia has been
cold and distant to me of late, but no matter what I do or say to my
darling, precious mother, she is always kind and loving. She noticed
how I moped about to-day, and begged me to tell her what was the
matter. I was ashamed to do that. I told her that it was a little
quarrel I had had with Amelia.

"Dear child," she said, "how I pity you that you have inherited my
quick, irritable temper."

"Yours, mother!" I cried out; "what can you mean?"

Mother smiled a little at my surprise.

"It is even so," she said.

"Then how did you cure yourself of it? Tell me quick, mother, and let
me cure myself of mine."

"My dear Katy," she said, "I wish I could make you see that God is
just as willing, and just as able to sanctify, as He is to redeem us.
It would save you so much weary, disappointing work. But God has
opened my eyes at last."

"I wish He would open mine, then," I said, "for all I see now is that
I am just as horrid as I can be, and that the more I pray the worse I
grow."

"That is not true, dear," she replied; "go on praying-pray without
ceasing."

I sat pulling my handkerchief this way and that, and at last rolled
it up into a ball and threw it across the room. I wished I could toss
my bad feelings into a corner with it.

"I do wish I could make you love to pray, my darling child," mother
went on. "If you only knew the strength, and the light, and the joy
you might have for the simple asking. God attaches no conditions to
His gifts. He only says, 'Ask!'"

"This may be true, but it is hard work to pray. It tires me. And I do
wish there was some easy way of growing good. In fact I should like
to have God send a sweet temper to me just as He sent bread and meat
to Elijah. I don't believe Elijah had to kneel down and pray for
them."



Chapter 2.

II. June 1.

LAST Sunday Dr. Cabot preached to the young. He first addressed those
who knew they did not love God. It did not seem to me that I belonged
to that class. Then he spoke to those who knew they did. I felt sure
I was not one of those. Last of all he spoke affectionately to those
who did not know what to think, and I was frightened and ashamed to
feel tears running down my cheeks, when he said that he believed that
most of his hearers who were in this doubtful state did really love
their Master, only their love was something as new and as tender and
perhaps as unobserved as the tiny point of green that, forcing its
way through the earth, is yet unconscious of its own existence, but
promises a thrifty plant. I don't suppose I express it very well, but
I know what he meant. He then invited those belonging to each class
to meet him on three successive Saturday afternoons. I shall
certainly go.

July 19.-I went to the meeting, and so did Amelia. A great many young
people were there and a few children. Dr. Cabot went about from seat
to seat speaking to each one separately. When he came to us I
expected he would say something about the way in which I had been
brought up, and reproach me for not profiting more by the
instructions and example I had at home. Instead of that he said, in a
cheerful voice,

"Well, my dear, I cannot see into your heart and positively tell
whether there is love to God there or not. But I suppose you have
come here to-day in order to let me help you to find out?"

I said, "Yes"; that was all I could get out.

"Let me see, then," he went on. "Do you love your mother?"

I said "Yes," once more.

"But prove to me that you do. How do you know it?"

I tried to think. Then I said,

"I feel that I love her. I love to love her, I like to be with her. I
like to hear people praise her. And I try--sometimes at least--to do
things to please her. But I don't try half as hard as I ought, and I
do and say a great many things to displease her."

"Yes, yes," he said, "I know."

"Has mother told you?" I cried out.

"No, dear, no indeed. But I know what human nature is after having
one of my own fifty years, and six of my children's to encounter."

Somehow I felt more courage after he said that.

"In the first place, then, you feel that you love your mother? But
you never feel that you love your God and Saviour?"

"I often try, and try, but I never do," I said.

"Love won't be forced," he said, quickly.

"Then what shall I do?"

"In the second place, you like to be with your mother. But you never
like to be with the Friend who loves you so much better than she
does?"

"I don't know, I never was with Him. Sometimes I think that when Mary
sat at His feet and heard Him talk, she must have been very happy."

"We come to the third test, then. You like to hear people praise your
mother. And have you ever rejoiced to hear the Lord magnified?"

I shook my head sorrowfully enough.

"Let us then try the last test. You know you love your mother because
you try to do things to please her. That is to do what you know she
wishes you to do? Very well. Have you never tried to do anything God
wishes you to do?"

"Oh yes; often. But not so often as I ought."

"Of course not. No one does that. But come now, why do you try to do
what you think will please Him? Because it is easy? Because you like
to do what He likes rather than what you like yourself?"

I tried to think, and got puzzled.

"Never mind," said Dr. Cabot, "I have come now to the point I was
aiming at. You cannot prove to yourself that you love God by
examining your feelings towards Him. They are indefinite and they
fluctuate. But just as far as you obey Him, just so far, depend upon
it, you love Him. It is not natural to us sinful, ungrateful human
beings to prefer His pleasure to our own, or to follow His way
instead of our own way, and nothing, nothing but love to Him can or
does make us obedient to Him."

"Couldn't we obey Him from fear?" Amelia now asked. She had been
listening all this time in silence.

"Yes; and so you might obey your mother from fear, but only for a
season. If you had no real love for her you would gradually cease to
dread her displeasure, whereas it is in the very nature of love to
grow stronger and more influential every hour."

"You mean, then, that if we want to know whether we love God, we must
find out whether we are obeying Him?" Amelia asked.

"I mean exactly that. 'He that keepeth my commandments he it is that
loveth me.' But I cannot talk with you any longer now. There are many
others still waiting. You can come to see me some day next week, if
you have any more questions to ask."

When we got out into the street, Amelia and I got hold of each
other's hands. We did not speak a word till we reached the door, but
we knew that we were as good friends as ever.

"I understand all Dr. Cabot said," Amelia whispered, as we separated.
But I felt like one in a fog. I cannot see how it is possible to love
God, and yet feel as stupid as I do when I think of Him. Still, I am
determined to do one thing, and that is to pray, regularly instead of
now and then, as I have got the habit of doing lately.

July 25.-School has closed for the season. I took the first prize
for drawing, and my composition was read aloud on examination day,
and everybody praised it. Mother could not possibly help showing, in
her face, that she was very much pleased. I am pleased myself. We are
now getting ready to take a journey. I do not think I shall go to see
Dr. Cabot again. My head is so full of other things, and there is so
much to do before we go. I am having four new dresses made, and I
can't imagine how to have them trimmed. I mean to run down to
Amelia's and ask her.

July 27.-I was rushing through the hall just after I wrote that, and
met mother.

"I am going to Amelia's," I said, hurrying past her.

"Stop one minute, dear. Dr. Cabot is downstairs. He says he has been
expecting a visit from you, and that as you did not come to him, he
has come to you."

"I wish he would mind his own business," I said.

"I think he is minding it, dear," mother answered. "His Master's
business is his, and that has brought him here. Go to him, my darling
child; I am sure you crave something better than prizes and
compliments and new dresses and journeys."

If anybody but mother had said that, my heart would have melted at
once, and I should have gone right down to Dr. Cabot to be moulded in
his hand to almost any shape. But as it was I brushed past, ran into
my room, and locked my door. Oh, what makes me act so! I hate myself
for it, I don't want to do it!

Last week I dined with Mrs. Jones. Her little Tommy was very fond of
me, and that, I suppose, makes her have me there so often. Lucy was
at the table, and very fractious. She cried first for one thing and
then for another. At last her mother in a gentle, but very decided
way put her down from the table. Then she cried louder than ever. But
when her mother offered to take her back if she would be good, she
screamed yet more. She wanted to come and wouldn't let herself come.
I almost hated her when I saw her act so, and now I am behaving ten
times worse and I am just as miserable as I can be.

July 29.-Amelia has been here. She has had her talk with Dr. Cabot
and is perfectly happy. She says it is so easy to be a Christian! It
may be easy for her; everything is. She never has any of my dreadful
feelings, and does not understand them when I try to explain them to
her. Well, if I am fated to be miserable, I must try to bear it.

Oct. 3.-Summer is over, school has begun again, and I am so busy that
I have not much time to think, to be low spirited. We had a
delightful journey, and I feel well and bright, and even gay. I never
enjoyed my studies as I do those of this year. Everything goes on
pleasantly here at home. But James has gone away to school, and we
miss him sadly. I wish I had a sister. Though I dare say I should
quarrel with her, if I had.

Oct 23.-I am so glad that my studies are harder this year, as I am
never happy except when every moment is occupied. However, I do not
study all the time, by any means. Mrs. Gordon grows more and more
fond of me, and has me there to dinner or to tea continually. She has
a much higher opinion of me than mother has, and is always saying the
sort of things that make you feel nice. She holds me up to Amelia as
an example, begging her to imitate me in my fidelity about my
lessons, and declaring there is nothing she so much desires as to
have a daughter bright and original like me. Amelia only laughs, and
goes and purrs in her mother's ears when she hears such talk. It
costs her nothing to be pleasant. She was born so. For my part, I
think myself lucky to have such a friend. She gets along with my odd,
hateful ways better than any one else does. Mother, when I boast of
this, says she has no penetration into character, and that she would
be fond of almost any one fond of her; and that the fury with which I
love her deserves some response. I really don't know what to make of
mother. Most people are proud of their children when they see others
admire them; but she does say such pokey things! Of course I know
that having a gift for music, and a taste for drawing, and a
reputation for saying witty, bright things isn't enough. But when she
doesn't find fault with me, and nothing happens to keep me down, I am
the gayest creature on earth. I do love to get with a lot of nice
girls, and carry on! I have got enough fun in me to keep a houseful
merry. And mother needn't say anything. I inherited it from her.

Evening.-I knew it was coming! Mother has been in to see what I was
about, and to give me a bit of her mind. She says she loves to see me
gay and cheerful, as is natural at my age, but that levity quite
upsets and disorders the mind, indisposing it for serious thoughts.

"But, mother," I said, "didn't you carry on when you were a young
girl?"

"Of course I did," she said, smiling. "But I do not think I was quite
so thoughtless as you are."

"Thoughtless" indeed! I wish I were! But am I not always full of
uneasy, reproachful thoughts when the moment of excitement is over?
Other girls, who seem less trifling than I, are really more so. Their
heads are full of dresses and parties and beaux, and all that sort of
nonsense. I wonder if that ever worries their mothers, or whether
mine is the only one who weeps in secret? Well, I shall be young but
once, and while I am, do let me have a good time!

Sunday, Nov. 20.-Oh, the difference between this day and the day I
wrote that! There are no good times in this dreadful world. I have
hardly courage or strength to write down the history of the past few
weeks. The day after I had deliberately made up my mind to enjoy
myself, cost what it might, my dear father called me to him, kissed
me, pulled my ears a little, and gave me some money.

"We have had to keep you rather low in funds," he said laughing. "But
I recovered this amount yesterday, and as it was a little debt I had
given up, I can spare it to you. For girls like pin-money, I know,
and you may spend this just as you please."

I was delighted. I want to take more drawing-lessons, but did not
feel sure he could afford it. Besides--I am a little ashamed to write
it down--I knew somebody had been praising me or father would not have
seemed so fond of me. I wondered who it was, and felt a good deal
puffed up. "After-all," I said to myself, "some people like me if I
have got my faults." I threw my arms around his neck and kissed him,
though that cost me a great effort. I never like to show what I feel.
But, oh! how thankful I am for it now.

As to mother, I know father never goes out without kissing her
good-by.

I went out with her to take a walk at three o'clock. We had just
reached the corner of Orange Street, when I saw a carriage driving
slowly towards us; it appeared to be full of sailors. Then I saw our
friend, Mr. Freeman, among them. When he saw us he jumped out and
came up to us. I do not know what he said. I saw mother turn pale and
catch at his arm as if she were afraid of falling. But she did not
speak a word.

"Oh! Mr. Freeman, what is it?" I cried out. "Has anything happened to
father? Is he hurt? Where is he?"

"He is in the carriage," he said. "We are taking him home. He has had
a fall."

Then we went on in silence. The sailors were carrying father in as we
reached the house. They laid him on the sofa, we saw his poor head...

Nov. 23.-I will try to write the rest now. Father was alive but
insensible. He had fallen down into the hold of the ship, and the
sailors heard him groaning there. He lived three hours after they
brought him home. Mr. Freeman and all our friends were very kind. But
we like best to be alone, we three, mother and James and I. Poor
mother looks twenty years older, but she is so patient, and so
concerned for us, and has such a smile of welcome for every one that
comes in, that it breaks my heart to see her.

Nov. 25.-Mother spoke to me very seriously to-day, about controlling
myself more. She said she knew this was my first real sorrow, and how
hard it was to bear it. But that she was afraid I should become
insane some time, if I indulged myself in such passions of grief. And
she said, too, that when friends came to see us, full of sympathy and
eager to say or do something for our comfort, it was our duty to
receive them with as much cheerfulness as possible.

I said they, none of them, had anything to say that did not provoke
me.

"It is always a trying task to visit the afflicted," mother said,
"and you make it doubly hard to your friends by putting on a gloomy,
forbidding air, and by refusing to talk of your dear father, as if
you were resolved to keep your sorrow all to yourself."

"I can't smile when I am so unhappy," I said.

A good many people have been here to-day. Mother has seen them all,
though she looked ready to drop. Mrs. Bates said to me, in her
little, weak, watery voice:

"Your mother is wonderfully sustained, dear. I hope you feel
reconciled to God's will. Rebellion is most displeasing to Him,
dear."

I made no answer. It is very easy for people to preach. Let me see
how they behave when they their turn to lose their friends.

Mrs. Morris said this was a very mysterious dispensation. But that
she was happy to see that Mother was meeting it with so much
firmness. "As for myself," she went on, "I was quite broken down by
my dear husband's death. I did not eat as much as would feed a bird,
for nearly a week. But some people have so much feeling; then again
others are so firm. Your mother is so busy talking with Mrs. March
that I won't interrupt her to say good-bye. I came prepared to
suggest several things that I thought would comfort her; but perhaps
she has thought of them herself."

I could have knocked her down. Firm, indeed! Poor mother.

After they had all gone, I made her lie down, she looked so tired and
worn out.

Then, I could not help telling her what Mrs. Morris had said.

She only smiled a little, but said nothing.

"I wish you would ever flare up, mother," I said.

She smiled again, and said she had nothing to "flare up" about.

"Then I shall do it for you!" I cried. "To hear that namby-pamby
woman, who is about as capable of understanding you as an old cat,
talking about your being firm! You see what you get by being quiet
and patient! People would like you much better if you refused to be
comforted, and wore a sad countenance."

"Dear Katy," said mother, "it is not my first object in life to make
people like me."

By this time she looked so pale that I was frightened. Though she is
so cheerful, and things go on much as they did before, I believe she
has got her death-blow. If she has, then I hope I have got mine. And
yet I am not fit to die. I wish I was, and I wish I could die. I have
lost all interest in everything, and don't care what becomes of me.

Nov. 23.-I believe I shall go crazy unless people stop coming here,
hurling volleys of texts at mother and at me. When soldiers drop
wounded on the battle-field, they are taken up tenderly and carried
"to the rear," which means, I suppose, out of sight and sound. Is
anybody mad enough to suppose it will do them any good to hear
Scripture quoted sermons launched at them before their open, bleeding
wounds are staunched?

Mother assents, in a mild way, when I talk so and says, "Yes, yes, we
are indeed lying wounded on the battle-field of life, and in no
condition to listen to any words save those of pity. But, dear Katy,
we must interpret aright all the well-meant attempts of our friends
to comfort us. They mean sympathy, however awkwardly they express
it."

And then she sighed, with a long, deep sigh, that told how it all
wearied her.

Dec. 14.-Mother keeps saying I spend too much time in brooding over
my sorrow. As for her, she seems to live in heaven. Not that she has
long prosy talks about it, but little words that she lets drop now
and then show where her thoughts are, and where she would like to be.
She seems to think everybody is as eager to go there as she is. For
my part, I am not eager at all. I can't make myself feel that it will
be nice to sit in rows, all the time singing, fond as I am of music.
And when I say to myself, "Of course we shall not always sit in rows
singing," then I fancy a multitude of shadowy, phantom-like beings,
dressed in white, moving to and fro in golden streets, doing nothing
in particular, and having a dreary time, without anything to look
forward to.

I told mother so. She said earnestly, and yet in her sweetest,
tenderest way,

"Oh, my darling Katy! What you need is such a living, personal love
to Christ as shall make the thought of being where He is so
delightful as to fill your mind with that single thought!"

What is "personal love to Christ?"

Oh, dear, dear! Why need my father have been snatched away from me,
when so many other girls have theirs spared to them? He loved me so!
He indulged me so much! He was so proud of me! What have I done that
I should have this dreadful thing happen to me? I shall never be as
happy as I was before. Now I shall always be expecting trouble. Yes,
I dare say mother will go next. Why shouldn't I brood over this
sorrow? I like to brood over it; I like to think how wretched I am; I
like to have long, furious fits of crying, lying on my face on the
bed.

Jan. I, 1832.-People talk a great deal about the blessed effects of
sorrow. But I do not see any good it has done me to lose my dear
father, and as to mother she was good enough before.

We are going to leave our pleasant home, where all of us children
were born, and move into a house in an out-of-the-way street. By
selling this, and renting a smaller one, mother hopes, with economy,
to carry James through college. And I must go to Miss Higgins' school
because it is less expensive than Mr. Stone's. Miss Higgins, indeed!
I never could bear her! A few months ago, how I should have cried and
stormed at the idea of her school. But the great sorrow swallows up
the little trial.

I tried once more, this morning, as it is the first day of the year,
to force myself to begin to love God.

I want to do it; I know I ought to do it; but I cannot. I go through
the form of saying something that I try to pass off as praying, every
day now. But I take no pleasure in it, as good people say they do,
and as I am sure mother does. Nobody could live in the house with
her, and doubt that.

Jan. 10.-We are in our new home now, and it is quite a cozy little
place. James is at home for the long vacation and we are together all
the time I am out of school. We study and sing together and now and
then, when we forget that dear father has gone, we are as full of fun
as ever. If it is so nice to have a brother, what must it be to have
a sister! Dear old Jim! He is the very pleasantest, dearest fellow in
the world!

Jan. 15.-I have come to another birthday and am seventeen. Mother has
celebrated it just as usual, though I know all these anniversaries
which used to be so pleasant, must be sad days to her now my dear
father has gone. She has been cheerful-and loving, and entered into
all my pleasures exactly as if nothing had happened. I wonder at
myself that I do not enter more into her sorrows, but though at times
the remembrance of our loss overwhelms me, my natural elasticity soon
makes me rise above and forget it. And I am absorbed with these
school-days, that come one after another, in such quick succession
that I am all the time running to keep up with them. And as long as I
do that I forget that death has crossed our threshold, and may do it
again. But to night I feel very sad, and as if I would give almost
any thing to live in a world where nothing painful could happen.
Somehow mother's pale face haunts and reproaches me. I believe I will
go to bed and to sleep as quickly as possible, and forget everything.



Chapter 3

III

July 16.

My school-days are over! I have come off with flying colors, and
mother is pleased at my success. I said to her to-day that I should
now have time to draw and practice to my heart's content.

"You will not find your heart content with either," she said.

"Why, mother!" I cried, "I thought you liked to see me happy!"

"And so I do," she said, quietly. "But there is something better to
get out of life than you have yet found."

"I am sure I hope so," I returned. "On the whole, I haven't got much
so far."

Amelia is now on such terms with Jenny Underhill that I can hardly
see one without seeing the other. After the way in which I have loved
her, this seems rather hard. Sometimes I am angry about it, and
sometimes grieved. However, I find Jenny quite nice. She buys all the
new books and lends them to me. I wish I liked more solid reading;
but I don't. And I wish I were not so fond of novels; but I am. If it
were not for mother I should read nothing else. And I am sure I often
feel quite stirred up by a really good novel, and admire and want to
imitate every high-minded, noble character it describes.

Jenny has a miniature of her brother "Charley" in a locket, which she
always wears, and often shows me. According to her, he is exactly
like the heroes I most admire in books. She says she knows he would
like me if we should meet. But that is not probable. Very few like
me. Amelia says it is because I say just what I think.

Wednesday.-Mother pointed out to me this evening two lines from a
book she was reading, with a significant smile that said they
described me:

"A frank, unchastened, generous creature, Whose faults and virtues
stand in bold relief."

"Dear me!" I said, "so then I have some virtues after all!"

And I really think I must have, for Jenny's brother, who has come
here for the sake of being near her, seems to like me very much.
Nobody ever liked me so much before, not even Amelia. But how foolish
to write that down!

Thursday.-Jenny's brother has been here all evening. He has the most
perfect manners I ever saw. I am sure that mother, who thinks so much
of such things, would be charmed with him but she happened to be out,
Mrs. Jones having sent for her to see about her baby. He gave me an
account of his mother's death, and how he and Jenny nursed her day
and night. He has a great deal of feeling. I was going to tell him
about my father's death, sorrow seems to bring people together so,
but I could not. Oh, if he had only had a sickness that needed our
tender nursing, instead of being snatched from us in that sudden way!

Sunday, Aug. 5.-Jenny's brother has been at our church all day. He
walked home with me this afternoon. Mother, after being up all night
with Mrs. Jones and her baby, was not able to go out.

Dr. Cabot preaches as if we had all got to die pretty soon, or else
have something almost as bad happen to us. How can old people always
try to make young people feel uncomfortable, and as if things
couldn't last?

Aug. 25.-Jenny says her brother is perfectly fascinated with me, and
that I must try to like him in return. I suppose mother would say my
head was turned by my good fortune, but it is not. I am getting quite
sober and serious. It is a great thing to be--to be--well--liked. I
have seen some verses of his composition to-day that show that he is
all heart and soul, and would make any sacrifice for one he loved. I
could not like a man who did not possess such sentiments as his.

Perhaps mother would think I ought not to put such things into my
journal.

Jenny has thought of such a splendid plan! What a dear little thing
she is! She and her brother are so much alike! The plan is for us
three girls, Jenny, Amelia and myself, to form ourselves into a
little class to read and to study together. She says "Charley" will
direct our readings and help us with our studies. It is perfectly
delightful.

September 1.-Somehow I forgot to tell mother that Mr. Underhill was
to be our teacher. So when it came my turn to have the class meet
here, she was not quite pleased. I told her she could stay and watch
us, and then she would see for herself that we all behaved ourselves.

Sept. 19.-The class met at Amelia's to-night. Mother insisted on
sending for me, though Mr. Underhill had proposed to see me home
himself. So he stayed after I left. It was not quite the thing in
him, for he must see that Amelia is absolutely crazy about him.

Sept. 28.-We met at Jenny's this evening. Amelia had a bad headache
and could not come. Jenny idled over her lessons, and at last took a
book and began to read. I studied awhile with Mr. Underhill. At last
he said, scribbling something on a bit of paper:

"Here is a sentence I hope you can translate."

I took it, and read these words:

"You are the brightest, prettiest, most warm-hearted little thing in
the world. And I love you more than tongue can tell. You must love me
in the same way."

I felt hot and then cold, and then glad and then sorry. But I
pretended to laugh, and said I could not translate Greek. I shall
have to tell mother, and what will she say?

Sept. 29.-This morning mother began thus:

"Kate, I do not like these lessons of yours. At your age, with your
judgment quite unformed, it is not proper that you should spend so
much time with a young man.

"Jenny is always there, and Amelia," I replied.

"That makes no difference. I wish the whole thing stopped. I do not
know what I have been thinking of to let it go on so long. Mrs.
Gordon says--"

"Mrs. Gordon! Ha!" I burst out, "I knew Amelia was at the bottom of
it! Amelia is in love with him up to her very ears, and because he
does not entirely neglect me, she has put her mother up to coming
here, meddling and making--"

"If what you say of Amelia is true, it is most ungenerous in you to
tell of it. But I do not believe it. Amelia Gordon has too much good
sense to be carried away by a handsome face and agreeable manners."

I began to cry.

"He likes me," I got out, "he likes me ever so much. Nobody ever was
so kind to me before. Nobody ever said such nice things to me. And I
don't want such horrid things said about him."

"Has it really come this!" said mother, quite shocked. "Oh, my poor
child, how my selfish sorrow has made me neglect you."

I kept on crying.

"Is it possible," she went on, "that with your good sense, and the
education you have had, you are captivated by this mere boy?"

"He is not a boy," I said. "He is a man. He is twenty years old; or
at least he will be on the fifteenth of next October."

"The child actually keeps his birthdays!" cried mother. "Oh, my
wicked, shameful carelessness."

"It's done now," I said, desperately. "It is too late to help it
now."

"You don't mean that he has dared to say anything without consulting
me?" asked mother. "And you have allowed it! Oh, Katherine!"

This time my mouth shut itself up, and no mortal force could open it.
I stopped crying, and sat with folded arms. Mother said what she had
to say, and then I came to you, my dear old Journal.

Yes, he likes me and I like him. Come now, let's out with it once for
all. He loves me and I love him. You are just a little bit too late,
mother.

Oct 1.-I never can write down all the things that have happened. The
very day after I wrote that mother had forbidden my going to the
class, Charley came to see her, and they had a regular fight
together. He has told me about it since. Then, as he could not
prevail, his uncle wrote, told her it would be the making of Charley
to be settled down on one young lady instead of hovering from flower
to flower, as he was doing now. Then Jenny came with her pretty ways,
and cried, and told mother what a darling brother Charley was. She
made a good deal, too, out of his having lost both father and mother,
and needing my affection so much. Mother shut herself up, and I have
no doubt prayed over it. I really believe she prays over every new
dress she buys. Then she sent for me and talked beautifully, and I
behaved abominably.

At last she said she would put us on one year's probation. Charley
might spend one evening here every two weeks, when she should always
be present. We were never to be seen together in public, nor would
she allow us to correspond. If, at the end of the year, we were both
as eager for it as we are now, she would consent to our engagement.
Of course we shall be, so I consider myself as good as engaged now.
Dear me! how funny it seems.

Oct 2.-Charley is not at all pleased with mother's terms, but no one
would guess it from his manner to her. His coming is always the
signal for her trotting down stairs; he goes to meet her and offers
her a chair, as if he was delighted to see her. We go on with the
lessons, as this gives us a chance to sit pretty close together, and
when I am writing my exercises and he corrects them, I rather think a
few little things get on to the paper that sound nicely to us, but
would not strike mother very agreeably. For instance, last night
Charley wrote:

"Is your mother never sick? A nice little headache or two would be so
convenient to us!"

And I wrote back.

"You dear old horrid thing. How can you be so selfish?"

Jan. 15, 1833.-I have been trying to think whether I am any happier
to-day than I was at this time a year ago. If I am not, I suppose it
is the tantalizing way in which I am placed in regard to Charley. We
have so much to say to each other that we can't say before mother,
and that we cannot say in writing, because a correspondence is one of
the forbidden things. He says he entered into no contract not to
write, and keeps slipping little notes into my hand; but I don't
think that quite right. Mother hears us arguing and disputing about
it, though she does not know the subject under discussion, and to-day
she said to me:

"I would not argue with him, if I were you. He never will yield."

"But it is a case of conscience," I said, "and he ought to yield."

"There is no obstinacy like that of a f---," she and stopped short.

"Oh, you may as well finish it!" I cried. "I know you think him a
fool."

Then mother burst out,

"Oh, my child," she said, "before it is too late, do be persuaded by
me to give up this whole thing. I shrink from paining or offending
you, but it is my duty, as your mother, to warn you against a
marriage that will make shipwreck of your happiness."

"Marriage!" I fairly shrieked out. That is the last thing I have ever
thought of. I felt a chill creep over me. All I had wanted was to
have Charley come here every day, take me out now and then, and care
for nobody else.

"Yes, marriage!" mother repeated. "For what is the meaning of an
engagement if marriage is not to follow? How can you fail to see,
what I see, oh! so plainly, that Charley Underhill can never, never
meet the requirements of your soul. You are captivated by what girls
of your age call beauty, regular features, a fair complexion and soft
eyes. His flatteries delude, and his professions of affection gratify
you. You do not see that he is shallow, and conceited, and selfish
and-"

"Oh mother! How can you be so unjust? His whole study seems to be to
please others."

"Seems to be--that is true," she replied. "His ruling passion is love
of admiration; the little pleasing acts that attract you are so many
traps set to catch the attention and the favorable opinion of those
about him. He has not one honest desire to please because it is right
to be pleasing. Oh, my precious child, what a fatal mistake you are
making in relying on your own judgment in this, the most important of
earthly decisions!"

I felt very angry.

"I thought the Bible forbade back-biting," I said.

Mother made no reply, except by a look which said about a hundred and
forty different things. And then I came up here and wrote some
poetry, which was very good (for me), though I don't suppose she
would think so.

Oct. 1.-The year of probation is over, and I have nothing to do now
but to be happy. But being engaged is not half so nice as I expected
it would be. I suppose it is owing to my being obliged to defy
mother's judgment in order to gratify my own. People say she has
great insight into character, and sees, at a glance, what others only
learn after much study.

Oct. 10.-I have taken a dreadful cold. It is too bad. I dare say I
shall be coughing all winter, and instead of going out with Charley,
be shut up at home.

Oct. 12.-Charley says he did not know that I was subject to a cough,
and that he hopes I am not consumptive, because his father and mother
died of consumption, and it makes him nervous to hear people cough. I
nearly strangled myself all the evening trying not to annoy him with
mine.



Chapter 4

IV

Nov. 2.

I really think I am sick and going to die. Last night I raised a
little blood. I dare not tell mother, it would distress her so, but I
am sure it came from my lungs. Charley said last week he really must
stay away till I got better, for my cough sounded like his mother's.
I have been very lonely, and have shed some tears, but most of the
time have been too sorrowful to cry. If we were married, and I had a
cough, would he go and leave me, I wonder?

Sunday, Nov 18-Poor mother is dreadfully anxious about me. But I
don't see how she can love me so, after the way I have behaved. I
wonder if, after all, mothers are not the best friends there are! I
keep her awake with my cough all night, and am mopy and cross all
day, but she is just as kind and affectionate as she can be.

Nov. 25.-The day I wrote that was Sunday. I could not go to church,
and I felt very forlorn and desolate. I tried to get some comfort by
praying, but when I got on my knees I just burst out crying and could
not say a word. For I have not seen Charley for ten days. As I knelt
there I began to think myself a perfect monster of selfishness for
wanting him to spend his evenings with me, now that I am so unwell
and annoy him so with my cough, and I asked myself if I ought not to
break off the engagement altogether, if I was really in consumption,
the very disease Charley dreaded most of all. It seemed such a proper
sacrifice to make of myself. Then I prayed-yes, I am sure I really
prayed as I had not done for more than a year, the idea of
self-sacrifice grew every moment more beautiful in my eyes, till at
last I felt an almost joyful triumph in writing to poor Charley, and
tell him what I had resolved to do. This is my letter:

My Dear, Dear Charley--I dare not tell you what it costs me to say
what I am about to do; but I am sure you know me well enough by this
time believe that it is only because your happiness is far more
precious to me than my own, that I have decided to write you this
letter. When you first told me that you loved me, you said, and you
have often said so since then, that it was my "brightness and gayety"
that attracted you. I knew there was something underneath my gayety
better worth your love, and was glad I could give you more than you
asked for. I knew I was not a mere thoughtless, laughing girl, but
that I had a heart as wide as the ocean to give you-as wide and as
deep.

But now my "brightness and gayety" have gone; I am sick and perhaps
am going to die. If this is so, it would be very sweet to have your
love go with me to the very gates of death, and beautify and glorify
my path thither. But what a weary task this would be to you, my poor
Charley! And so, if you think it best, and it would relieve you of
any care and pain, I will release you from our engagement and set you
free. Your Little Katy.

I did not sleep at all that night. Early on Monday I sent off my
letter; and my heart beat so hard all day that I was tired and faint.
Just at dark his answer came; I can copy it from memory.

Dear Kate:--What a generous, self-sacrificing little thing you are! I
always thought so, but now you have given me a noble proof of it. I
will own that I have been disappointed to find your constitution so
poor, and that it has been very dull sitting and hearing you cough,
especially as I was reminded of the long and tedious illness through
which poor Jenny and myself had to nurse our mother. I vowed then
never to marry a consumptive woman, and I thank you for making it so
easy for me to bring our engagement to an end. My bright hopes are
blighted, and it will be long before I shall find another to fill
your place. I need not say how much I sympathize with you in this
disappointment. I hope the consolations of religion will now be
yours. Your notes, the lock of your hair, etc., I return with this
now. I will not reproach you for the pain you have cost me; I know it
is not your fault that your health has become so frail. I remain your
sincere friend,

Charles Underhill

Jan. 1, 1834.-Let me finish this story If I can.

My first impulse after reading his letter was to fly to mother, and
hide away forever in her dear, loving arms.

But I restrained myself, and with my heart beating so that I could
hardly hold my pen, I wrote:

Mr. Underhill Sir--The scales have fallen from my eyes, and I see you
at last just as you are. Since my note to you on Sunday last, I have
had a consultation of physicians, and they all agree that my disease
is not of an alarming character, and that I shall soon recover. But I
thank God that before it was too late, you have been revealed to me
just as you are-a heartless, selfish, shallow creature, unworthy the
love of a true-hearted woman, unworthy even of your own self-respect.
I gave you an opportunity to withdraw from our engagement in full
faith, loving you so truly that I was ready to go trembling to my
grave alone if you shrank from sustaining me to it. But I see now
that I did not dream for one moment that you would take me at my word
and leave me to my fate. I thought I loved a man, and could lean on
him when strength failed me; I know now that I loved a mere creature
of my imagination. Take back your letters; loathe the sight of them.
Take back the ring, and find, if you can, a woman who will never be
sick, never out of spirits, and who never will die. Thank heaven it
is not Katherine Mortimer.

These lines came to me in reply:

"Thank God it is not Kate Mortimer. I want an angel for my wife, not
a vixen. C. U."

Jan. 15-What a tempest-tossed creature this birthday finds me. But
let me finish this wretched, disgraceful story, if I can, before I
quite lose my senses.

I showed my mother the letters. She burst into tears and opened her
arms, and I ran into them as a wounded bird flies into the ark. We
cried together. Mother never said, never looked, "I told you so."
All she did say was this,

"God has heard my prayers! He is reserving better things for my
child!"

Dear mother's are not the only arms I have flown to. But it does not
seem as if God ought to take me in because I am in trouble, when I
would not go to him when I was happy in something else. But even in
the midst of my greatest felicity I had many and many a misgiving;
many a season when my conscience upbraided me for my willfulness
towards my dear mother, and my whole soul yearned for something
higher and better even than Charley's love, precious as it was.

Jan. 26.-I have shut myself up in my room to-day to think over
things. The end of it is that I am full of mortification and
confusion of face. If I had only had confidence in mother's judgment
I should never have get entangled in this silly engagement. I see now
that Charley never could have made me happy, and I know there is a
good deal in my heart he never called out. I wish, however, I had not
written him when I was in passion. No wonder he is thankful that he
free from such a vixen. But, oh the provocation was terrible!

I have made up my mind never to tell a human soul about this affair.
It will be so high-minded and honorable to shield him thus from the
contempt he deserves. With all my faults I am glad that there is
nothing mean or little about me!

Jan. 27.-I can't bear to write it down, but I will. The ink was
hardly dry yesterday on the above self-laudation when Amelia came.
She had been out of town, and had only just learned what had
happened. Of course she was curious to know the whole story.

And I told it to her, every word of it! Oh, Kate Mortimer, how
"high-minded" you are! How free from all that is "mean and little"! I
could tear my hair if it would do any good?

Amelia defended Charley, and I was thus led on to say every harsh
thing of him I could think of. She said he was of so sensitive a
nature, had so much sensibility, and such a constitutional aversion
to seeing suffering, that for her part she could not blame him.

"It is such a pity you had not had your lungs examined before you
wrote that first letter," she went on. "But you are so impulsive! If
you had only waited you would be engaged to Charley still!"

"I am thankful I did not wait," I cried, angrily. "Do, Amelia, drop
the subject forever. You and I shall never agree upon it. The truth
is, you are two-thirds in love with him, and have been, all along."

She colored, and laughed, and actually looked pleased. If anyone had
made such an outrageous speech to me I should have been furious.

"I suppose you know," said she, "that old Mr. Underhill has taken
such a fancy to him that he has made him his heir; and he is as rich
as a Jew."

"Indeed!" I said, dryly.

I wonder if mother knew it when she opposed our engagement so
strenuously.

Jan. 31.-I have asked her, and she said she did. Mr. Underhill told
her his intentions when he urged her consent to the engagement. Dear
mother! How unworldly, how unselfish she is!

Feb. 4.-The name of Charley Underhill appears on these pages for the
last time. He is engaged to Amelia! From this moment she is lost to
me forever. How desolate, how mortified, how miserable I am! Who
could have thought this of Amelia! She came to see me, radiant with
joy. I concealed my disgust until she said that Charley felt now that
he had never really loved me, but had preferred her all along. Then I
burst out. What I said I do not know, and do not care. The whole
thing is so disgraceful that I should be a stock or a stone not to
resent it.

Feb. 5.-After yesterday's passion of grief, shame, and anger, I feel
perfectly stupid and languid. Oh, that I was prepared for a better
world, and could fly to it and be at rest!

Feb. 6.-Now that it is all over, how ashamed I am of the fury I have
been in, and which has given Amelia such advantage over me! I was
beginning to believe that I was really living a feeble and
fluttering, but real Christian life, and finding some satisfaction in
it. But that is all over now. I am doomed to be a victim of my own
unstable, passionate, wayward nature, and the sooner I settle down
into that conviction, the better. And yet how my very soul craves the
highest happiness, and refuses to be comforted while that is wanting.

Feb. 7.-After writing that, I do not know what made me go to see Dr.
Cabot. He received me in that cheerful way of his that seems to
promise the taking one's burden right off one's back.

"I am very glad to see you, my dear child," he said.

I intended to be very dignified and cold. As if I was going to have
any Dr. Cabot's undertaking to sympathize with me! But those few kind
words just upset me, and I began to cry.

"You would not speak so kindly," I got out at last, "if you knew what
a dreadful creature I am. I am angry with myself, and angry with
everybody, and angry with God. I can't be good two minutes at a time.
I do everything I do not want to do, and do nothing I try and pray to
do. Everybody plagues me and tempts me. And God does not answer any
of my prayers, and I am just desperate."

"Poor child!" he said, in a low voice, as if to himself. "Poor,
heart-sick, tired child, that cannot see what I can see, that its
Father's loving arms are all about it?"

I stopped crying, to strain my ears and listen. He went on.

"Katy, all that you say may be true. I dare say it is. But God loves
you. He loves you."

"He loves me," I repeated to myself. "He loves me! Oh, Dr. Cabot, if
I could believe that! If I could believe that, after all the promises
I have broken, all the foolish, wrong things I have done and shall
always be doing, God perhaps still loves me!"

"You may be sure of it," he said, solemnly. "I, minister, bring the
gospel to you to-day. Go home and say over and over to yourself, 'I
am a wayward, foolish child. But He loves me! I have disobeyed and
grieved Him ten thousand times. But He loves me! I have lost faith in
some of my dearest friends and am very desolate. But He loves me! I
do not love Him, I am even angry with Him! But He loves me! '"

I came away, and all the way home I fought this battle with myself,
saying, "He loves me!" I knelt down to pray, and all my wasted,
childish, wicked life came and stared me in the face. I looked at it,
and said with tears of joy, "But He loves me!" Never in my life did I
feel so rested, so quieted, so sorrowful, and yet so satisfied.

Feb 10.-What a beautiful world this is, and how full it is of truly
kind, good people! Mrs. Morris was here this morning, and just one
squeeze of that long, yellow old hand of hers seemed to speak a
bookful! I wonder why I have always disliked her so, for she is
really an excellent woman. I gave her a good kiss to pay her for the
sympathy she had sense enough not to put into canting words, and if
you will believe it, dear old Journal, the tears came into her eyes,
and she said:

"You are one of the Lord's beloved ones, though perhaps you do not
know it."

I repeated again to myself those sweet, mysterious words, and then I
tried to think what I could do for Him. But I could not think of
anything great or good enough. I went into mother's room and put my
arms round her and told her how I loved her. She looked surprised and
pleased.

"Ah, I knew it would come!" she said, laying her hand on her Bible.

"Knew what would come, mother?"

"Peace," she said.

I came back here and wrote a little note to Amelia, telling her how
ashamed and sorry I was that I could not control myself the other
day. Then I wrote a long letter to James. I have been very careless
about writing to him.

Then I began to hem those handkerchiefs mother asked me to finish a
month ago. But I could not think of anything to do for God. I wish I
could. It makes me so happy to think that all this time, while I was
caring for nobody but myself, and fancying He must almost hate me, He
was loving and pitying me.

Feb. 15.-I went to see Dr. Cabot again to-day. He came down from his
study with his pen in his hand.

"How dare you come and spoil my sermon on Saturday?" he asked,
good-humoredly.

Though he seemed full of loving kindness, I was ashamed of my
thoughtlessness. Though I did not know he was particularly busy on
Saturdays. If I were a minister I am sure I would get my sermons done
early in the week.

"I only wanted to ask one thing," I said. "I want to do something for
God. And I cannot think of anything unless it is to go on a mission.
And mother would never let me do that. She thinks girls with delicate
health are not fit for such work."

"At all events I would not go to-day," he replied. "Meanwhile do
everything you do for Him who has loved you and given Himself for
you."

I did not dare to stay any longer, and so came away quite puzzled.
Dinner was ready, and as I sat down to the table, I said to myself:

"I eat this dinner for myself, not for God. What can Dr. Cabot mean?"
Then I remembered the text about doing all for the glory of God, even
in eating and drinking; but I do not understand it at all.

Feb. 19.-It has seemed to me for several days that it must be that I
really do love God, though ever so little. But it shot through my
mind to-day like a knife, that it is a miserable, selfish love at the
best, not worth my giving, not worth God's accepting. All my old
misery has come back with seven other miseries more miserable than
itself. I wish I had never been born! I wish I were thoughtless and
careless, like so many other girls of my age, who seem to get along
very well, and to enjoy themselves far more than I do.

Feb. 21.-Dr. Cabot came to see me to-day. I told him all about it. He
could not help smiling as he said:

"When I see a little infant caressing its mother, would you have me
say to it, 'You selfish child, how dare you pretend to caress your
mother in that way? You are quite unable to appreciate her character;
you love her merely because she loves you, treats you kindly?'"

It was my turn to smile now, at my own folly.

"You are as yet but a babe in Christ," Dr. Cabot continued. "You love
your God and Saviour because He first loved you. The time will come
when the character of your love will become changed into one which
sees and feels the beauty and the perfection of its object, and if
you could be assured that He no longer looked on you with favor, you
would still cling to Him with devoted affection."

"There is one thing more that troubles me," I said. "Most persons
know the exact moment when they begin real Christian lives. But I do
not know of any such time in my history. This causes me many uneasy
moments."

"You are wrong in thinking that most persons have this advantage over
you. I believe that the children of Christian parents, who have been
judiciously trained, rarely can point to any day or hour when they
began to live this new life. The question is not, do you remember, my
child, when you entered this world, and how! It is simply this, are
you now alive and an inhabitant thereof? And now it is my turn to ask
you a question. How happens it that you, who have a mother of rich
and varied experience, allow yourself to be tormented with these
petty anxieties which she is as capable of dispelling as I am?"

"I do not know," I answered. "But we girls can't talk to our mothers
about any of our sacred feelings, and we hate to have them talk to
us."

Dr. Cabot shook his head.

"There is something wrong somewhere," he said, "A young girl's mother
is her natural refuge in every perplexity. I hoped that you, who have
rather more sense than most girls of your age, could give me some
idea what the difficulty is."

After he had gone, I am ashamed to own that I was in a perfect
flutter of delight at what he had said about my having more sense
than most girls. Meeting poor mother on the stairs while in this
exalted state of mind, I gave her a very short answer to a kind
question, and made her unhappy, as I have made myself.

It is just a year ago to-day that I got frightened at my
novel-reading propensities, and resolved not to look into one for
twelve months. I was getting to dislike all other books, and night
after night sat up late, devouring everything exciting I could get
hold of. One Saturday night I sat up till the clock struck twelve to
finish one, and the next morning I was so sleepy that I had to stay
at home from church. Now I hope and believe the back of this taste is
broken, and that I shall never be a slave to it again. Indeed it does
not seem to me now that I shall ever care for such books again.

Feb. 24.-Mother spoke to me this morning for the fiftieth time, I
really believe, about my disorderly habits. I don't think I am
careless because I like confusion, but the trouble is I am always in
a hurry and a ferment about something. If I want anything, I want it
very much, and right away. So if I am looking for a book, or a piece
of music, or a pattern, I tumble everything around, and can't stop to
put them to rights. I wish I were not so-eager and impatient. But I
mean to try to keep my room and my drawers in order, to please
mother.

She says, too, that I am growing careless about my hair and my dress.
But that is because my mind is so full of graver, more important
things. I thought I ought to be wholly occupied with my duty to God.
But mother says duty to God includes duty to one's neighbor, and that
untidy hair, put up in all sorts of rough bunches, rumpled cuffs and
collars, and all that sort of thing, make one offensive to all one
meets. I am sorry she thinks so, for I find it very convenient to
twist up my hair almost any how, and it takes a good deal of time to
look after collars and cuffs.

March 14.-To-day I feel discouraged and disappointed. I certainly
thought that if God really loved me, and I really loved Him, I should
find myself growing better day by day. But I am not improved in the
least. Most of the time I spend on my knees I am either stupid;
feeling nothing at all, or else my head is full of what I was doing
before I began to pray, or what I am going to do as soon as I get
through. I do not believe anybody else in the world is like me in
this respect. Then when I feel differently, and can make a nice, glib
prayer, with floods of tears running down my cheeks, I get all puffed
up, and think how much pleased God must be to see me so fervent in
spirit. I go down-stairs in this frame, and begin to scold Susan for
misplacing my music, till all of a sudden I catch myself doing it,
and stop short, crestfallen and confounded. I have so many such
experiences that I feel like a baby just learning to walk, who is so
afraid of falling that it has half a mind to sit down once for all.

Then there is another thing. Seeing mother so fond of Thomas A
Kempis, I have been reading it, now and then, and am not fond of it
at all. From beginning to end it exhorts to self-denial in every form
and shape. Must I then give up all hope of happiness in this world,
and modify all my natural tastes and desires? Oh, I do love so to be
happy! I do so hate to suffer! The very thought of being sick, or of
being forced to nurse sick people, with all their cross ways, and of
losing my friends, or of having to live with disagreeable people,
makes me shudder. I want to please God, and to be like Him. I
certainly do. But I am so young, and it is so natural to want to have
a good time! And now I am in for it I may as well tell the whole
story. When I read the lives of good men and women who have died and
gone to heaven, I find they all liked to sit and think about God and
about Christ. Now I don't. I often try, but my mind flies off in a
tangent. The truth is I am perfectly discouraged.

March 17.-I went to see Dr. Cabot to-day, but he was out, so I
thought I would ask for Mrs. Cabot, though I was determined not to
tell her any of my troubles. But somehow she got the whole story out
of me, and instead of being shocked, as I expected she would be, she
actually burst out laughing! She recovered herself immediately,
however.

"Do excuse me for laughing at you, you dear child you!" she said.
"But I remember so well how I use to flounder through just such
needless anxieties, and life looks so different, so very different,
to me now from what it did then! What should you think of a man who,
having just sowed his field, was astonished not to see it at once
ripe for the harvest, because his neighbor's, after long months of
waiting, was just being gathered in?"

"Do you mean," I asked, "that by and by I shall naturally come to
feel and think as other good people do?"

"Yes, I do. You must make the most of what little Christian life you
have; be thankful God has given you so much, cherish it, pray over
it, and guard it like the apple of your eye. Imperceptibly, but
surely, it will grow, and keep on growing, for this is its nature."

"But I don't want to wait," I said, despondently. "I have just been
reading a delightful book, full of stories of heroic deeds-not
fables, but histories of real events and real people. It has quite
stirred me up, and made me wish to possess such beautiful heroism,
and that I were a man, that I might have a chance to perform some
truly noble, self-sacrificing acts."

"I dare say your chance will come," she replied, "though you are not
a man. I fancy we all get, more or less, what we want."

"Do you really think so? Let me see, then, what I want most. But I am
staying too long. Were you particularly busy?"

"No," she returned smilingly, "I am learning that the man who wants
me is the man I want."

"You are very good to say so. Well, in the first place, I do really
and truly want to be good. Not with common goodness, you know, but-"

"But uncommon goodness," she put in.

"I mean that I want to be very, very good. I should like next best to
be learned and accomplished. Then I should want to be perfectly well
and perfectly happy. And a pleasant home, of course, I must have,
with friends to love me, and like me, too. And I can't get along
without some pretty, tasteful things about me. But you are laughing
at me! Have I said anything foolish?"

"If I laughed it was not at you, but at poor human nature that would
fain grasp everything at once. Allowing that you should possess all
you have just described, where is the heroism you so much admire for
exercise?"

"That is just what I was saying. That is just what troubles me."

"To be sure, while perfectly well and happy, in a pleasant home;
with friends to love and admire you--"

"Oh, I did not say admire," I interrupted.

"That was just what you meant, my dear."

I am afraid it was, now I come to think it over.

"Well, with plenty of friends, good in an uncommon way, accomplished,
learned, and surrounded with pretty and tasteful objects, your life
will certainly be in danger of not proving very sublime."

"It is a great pity," I said, musingly.

"Suppose then you content yourself for the present with doing in a
faithful, quiet, persistent way all the little, homely tasks that
return with each returning day, each one as unto God, and perhaps by
and by you will thus have gained strength for a more heroic life."

"But I don't know how."

"You have some little home duties, I suppose?"

"Yes; I have the care of my own room, and mother wants me to have a
general oversight of the parlor; you know we have but one parlor
now."

"Is that all you have to do?"

"Why, my music and drawing take up a good deal of my time, and I read
and study more or less, and go out some, and we have a good many
visitors."

"I suppose, then, you keep your room in nice lady-like order, and
that the parlor is dusted every morning, loose music put out of the
way, books restored to their places-"

"Now I know mother has been telling you."

"Your mother has told me nothing at all."

"Well, then," I said, laughing, but a little ashamed, "I don't keep
my room in nice order, and mother really sees to the parlor herself,
though I pretend to do it."

"And is she never annoyed by this neglect?"

"Oh, yes, very much annoyed."

"Then, dear Katy, suppose your first act of heroism to-morrow should
be the gratifying your mother in these little things, little though
they are. Surely your first duty, next to pleasing God, is to please
your mother, and in every possible way to sweeten and beautify her
life. You may depend upon it that a life of real heroism and
self-sacrifice must begin and lay its foundation in this little
world, wherein it learns its first lesson and takes its first steps."

"And do you really think that God notices such little things?"

"My dear child, what a question! If there is any one truth I would
gladly impress on the mind of a you Christian, it is just this, that
God notices the most trivial act, accepts the poorest, most
threadbare little service, listens to the coldest, feeblest petition,
and gathers up with parental fondness all our fragmentary desires and
attempts at good works. Oh, if we could only begin to conceive how He
loves us, what different creatures we should be!"

I felt inspired by her enthusiasm, though I don't think I quite
understand what she means. I did not dare to stay any longer, for,
with her great host of children, she must have her hands full.

March 25.-Mother is very much astonished to see how nicely I am
keeping things in order. I was flying about this morning, singing,
and dusting the furniture, when she came in and began, "He that is
faithful in that which is least"-but I ran at her my brush, and
would not let her finish. I really, really don't deserve to be praised.
For I have been thinking that, if it is true that God notices every
little thing we do to please Him, He must also notice every cross
word we speak, every shrug of the shoulders, every ungracious look,
and that they displease Him. And my list of such offences is as long
as my life.

March 29-Yesterday, for the first time since that dreadful blow, I
felt some return of my natural gayety and cheerfulness. It seemed to
come hand in hand with my first real effort to go so far out of
myself as to try to do exactly what would gratify dear mother.

But to-day I am all down again. I miss Amelia's friendship, for one
thing. To be sure I wonder how I ever came to love such a superficial
character so devotedly, but I must have somebody to love, and perhaps
I invented a lovely creature, and called it by her name, and bowed
down to it and worshiped it. I certainly did so in regard to him
whose heart less cruelty has left me so sad, so desolate.

Evening.-Mother has been very patient and forbearing with me all day.
To-night, after tea, she said, in her gentlest, tenderest way,

"Dear Katy, I feel very sorry for you. But I see one path which you
have not yet tried, which can lead you out of these sore straits. You
have tried living for yourself a good many years, and the result is
great weariness and heaviness of soul. Try now to live for others.
Take a class in the Sunday-school. Go with me to visit my poor
people. You will be astonished to find how much suffering and
sickness there is in this world, and how delightful it is to
sympathize with and try to relieve it."

This advice was very repugnant to me. My time is pretty fully
occupied with my books, my music and my drawing. And of all places in
the world I hate a sick-room. But, on the whole, I will take a class
in the Sunday-school.



Chapter 5

V.

APRIL 6.

I have taken it at last. I would not take one before, because I knew
I could not teach little children how to love God, unless I loved Him
myself. My class is perfectly delightful. There are twelve dear
little things in it, of all ages between eight and nine. Eleven are
girls, and the one boy makes me more trouble than all of them put
together. When I get them all about me, and their sweet innocent
faces look up into mine, I am so happy that I can hardly help
stopping every now and then to kiss them. They ask the very strangest
questions I mean to spend a great deal of time in preparing the
lesson, and in hunting up stories to illustrate it. Oh, I am so glad
I was ever born into this beautiful world, where there will always be
dear little children to love!

APRIL 13.-Sunday has come again, and with it my darling little class!
Dr. Cabot has preached delightfully all day, and I feel that I begin
to understand his preaching better, and that it must do me good. I
long, I truly long to please God; I long to feel as the best
Christians feel, and to live as they live.

APRIL 20.-Now that I have these twelve little ones to instruct, I am
more than ever in earnest about setting them a good example through
the week. It is true they do not, most of them, know how I spend my
time, nor how I act. But I know, and whenever I am conscious of not
practicing what I preach, I am bitterly ashamed and grieved. How much
work, badly done, I am now having to undo. If I had begun in earnest
to serve God when I was as young as these children are, how many
wrong habits I should have avoided; habits that entangle me now, as
in so many nets. I am trying to take each of these little gentle
girls by the hand and to lead her to Christ. Poor Johnny Ross is not
so docile as they are, and tries my patience to the last degree.

APRIL 27.-This morning I had my little flock about me, and talked to
them out of the very bottom of my heart about Jesus. They left their
seats and got close to me in a circle, leaning on my lap and drinking
in every word. All of a sudden I was aware, as by a magnetic
influence, that a great lumbering man in the next seat was looking at
me out of two of the blackest eyes I ever saw, and evidently
listening to what I was saying. I was disconcerted at first, then
angry. What impertinence. What rudeness! I am sure he must have seen
my displeasure in my face, for he got up what I suppose he meant for
a blush, that is he turned several shades darker than he was before,
giving one the idea that he is full of black rather than red blood. I
should not have remembered it, however-by it-I mean his
impertinence--if he had not shortly after made a really excellent
address to the children. Perhaps it was a little above their
comprehension, but it showed a good deal of thought and earnestness.
I meant to ask who he was, but forgot it.

This has been a delightful Sunday. I have really feasted on Dr.
Cabot's preaching. But I am satisfied that there is something in
religion I do not yet comprehend. I do wish I positively knew that
God had forgiven and accepted me.

MAY 6.-Last evening Clara Ray had a little party and I was there. She
has a great knack at getting the right sort of people together, and
of making them enjoy themselves.

I sang several songs, and so did Clara, but they all said my voice
was finer and in better training than hers. It is delightful to be
with cultivated, agreeable people. I could have stayed all night, but
mother sent for me before any one else had thought of going.

MAY 7.-I have been on a charming excursion to-day with Clara Ray and
all her set. I was rather tired, but had an invitation to a concert
this evening which I could not resist.

JULY 21.-So much has been going on that I have not had time to write.
There is no end to the picnics, drives, parties, etc., this summer. I
am afraid I am not getting on at all. My prayers are dull and short,
and full of wandering thoughts. I am brimful of vivacity and good
humor in company, and as soon as I get home am stupid and peevish. I
suppose this will always be so, as it always has been and I declare I
would rather be so than such a vapid, flat creature as Mary Jones, or
such a dull, heavy one as big Lucy Merrill.

JULY 24.-Clara Ray says the girls think me reckless and imprudent in
speech. I've a good mind not to go with her set any more. I am afraid
I have been a good deal dazzled by the attentions I have received of
late; and now comes this blow at my vanity.

On the whole, I feel greatly out of sorts this evening.

JULY 28.-People talk about happiness to be found in a Christian life.
I wonder why I do not find more! On Sundays I am pretty good, and
always seem to start afresh; but on week-days I am drawn along with
those about me. All my pleasures are innocent ones; there is surely
no harm in going to concerts, driving out, singing, and making little
visits! But these things distract me; they absorb me; they make
religious duties irksome. I almost wish I could shut myself up in a
cell, and so get out of the reach of temptation.

The truth is, the journey heavenward is all up hill I have to force
myself to keep on. The wonder is that anybody gets there with so much
to oppose--- so little to help one!

JULY 29.-It is high time to stop and think. I have been like one
running a race, and am stopping to take breath. I do not like the way
in which things have been going on of late. I feel restless and ill
at ease. I see that if I would be happy in God, I must give Him all.
And there is a wicked reluctance to do that. I want Him-but I want to
have my own way, too. I want to walk humbly and softly before Him,
and I want to go where I shall be admired and applauded. To whom
shall I yield? To God? Or to myself?

JULY 30.-I met Dr. Cabot to-day, and could not, help asking the
question:

"Is it right for me to sing and play in company when all I do it for
is to be admired?"

"Are you sure it is all you do it for?" he returned.

"Oh," I said, "I suppose there may be a sprinkling of desire to
entertain and please, mixed with the love of display."

"Do you suppose that your love of display, allowing you have it,
would be forever slain by your merely refusing to sing in company?"

"I thought that might give it a pretty hard blow," I said, "if not
its death-blow."

"Meanwhile, in, punishing yourself you punish your poor innocent
friends," he said laughing. "No child, go on singing; God has given
you this power of entertaining and, gratifying your friends. But,
pray without ceasing, that you may sing from pure benevolence and
not from pure self-love."

"Why, do people pray about such things as that?" I cried.

"Of course they do. Why, I would pray about my little finger, if my
little finger went astray."

I looked at his little finger, but saw no signs of its becoming
schismatic.

AUG. 3.-This morning I took great delight in praying for my little
scholars, and went to Sunday-school as on wings. But on reaching my
seat, what was my horror to find Maria Perry there!

"Oh, your seat is changed," said she. "I am to have half your class,
and I like this seat better than those higher up. I suppose you don't
care?"

"But I do care," I returned; "and you have taken my very best
children-the very sweetest and the very prettiest. I shall speak to
Mr. Williams about it directly."

"At any rate, I would not fly into such a fury," she said. "It is
just as pleasant to me to have pretty children to teach as it is to
you. Mr. Williams said he had no doubt you would be glad to divide
your class with me, as it is so large; and I doubt if you gain
anything by speaking to him."

There was no time for further discussion, as school was about to
begin. I went to my new seat with great disgust, and found it very
inconvenient. The children could not cluster around me as they did
before, and I got on with the lesson very badly. I am sure Maria
Perry has no gift at teaching little children, and I feel quite vexed
and disappointed. This has not been a profitable Sunday, and I and
now going to bed, cheerless and uneasy.

AUG. 9.-Mr. Williams called this evening to say that I am to have my
old seat and all the children again. All the mothers had been to see
him, or had written him notes about it, and requested that I continue
to teach them. Mr. Williams said he hoped I would go on teaching for
twenty years, and that as fast as his little girls grew old enough to
come to Sunday-school he should want me to take charge of them. I
should have been greatly elated by these compliments, but for the
display I made of myself to Maria Perry on Sunday. Oh, that I could
learn to bridle my unlucky tongue!

JAN. 15, 1835.-To-day I am twenty. That sounds very old, yet I feel
pretty much as I did before. I have begun to visit some of mother's
poor folks with her, and am astonished to see how they love her, how
plainly they let her talk to them. As a general rule, I do not think
poor people are very interesting, and they are always ungrateful.

We went first to see old Jacob Stone. I have been there a good many
times with the baskets of nice things mother takes such comfort in
sending him, but never would go in. I was shocked to see how worn
away he was. He seemed in great distress of mind, and begged mother
to pray with him. I do not see how she could. I am perfectly sure
that no earthly power could ever induce me to go round praying on
bare floors, with people sitting, rocking and staring all the time,
as the two Stone girls stared at mother. How tenderly she prayed for
him!

We then went to see Susan Green. She had made a carpet for her room
by sewing together little bits of pieces given her, I suppose, by
persons for whom she works, for she goes about fitting and making
carpets. It looked bright and cheerful. She had a nice bed in the
corner, covered with a white quilt, and some little ornaments were
arranged about the room. Mother complimented her on her neatness, and
said a queen might sleep in such a bed as that, and hoped she found
it as comfortable as it looked.

"Mercy on us!" she cried out, "it ain't to sleep in! I sleep up in
the loft, that I climb to by a ladder every night."

Mother looked a little amused, and then she sat and listened,
patiently, to a long account of how the poor old thing had invested
her money; how Mr. Jones did not pay the interest regularly, and how
Mr. Stevens haggled about the percentage. After we came away, I asked
mother how she could listen to such a rigmarole in patience, and what
good she supposed she had done by her visit.

"Why the poor creature likes to show off her bright carpet and nice
bed, her chairs, her vases and her knick-knacks, and she likes to
talk about her beloved money, and her bank stock. I may not have done
her any good; but I have given her a pleasure, and so have you."

"Why, I hardly spoke a word."

"Yes, but your mere presence gratified her. And if she ever gets into
trouble, she will feel kindly towards us for the sake of our sympathy
with her pleasures, and will let us sympathize with her sorrows."

I confess this did not seem a privilege to be coveted. She is not
nice at all, and takes snuff.

We went next to see Bridget Shannon. Mother had lost sight of her for
some years, and had just heard that she was sick and in great want.
We found her in bed; there was no furniture in the room, and three
little half-naked children sat with their bare feet in some ashes
where there had been a little fire. Three such disconsolate faces I
never saw. Mother sent me to the nearest baker's for bread; I ran
nearly all the way, and I hardly know which I enjoyed most, mother's
eagerness in distributing, or the children's in clutching at and
devouring it. I am going to cut up one or two old dresses to make the
poor things something to cover them. One of them has lovely hair that
would curl beautifully if it were only brushed out. I told her to
come to see me to-morrow, she is so very pretty. Those few visits
used up the very time I usually spend in drawing. But on the whole I
am glad I went with mother, because it has gratified her. Besides,
one must either stop reading the Bible altogether, or else leave off
spending one's whole time in just doing easy pleasant things one
likes to do.

JAN. 20.-The little Shannon girl came, and I washed her face and
hands, brushed out her hair and made it curl in lovely golden
ringlets all round her sweet face, and carried her in great triumph
to mother.

"Look at the dear little thing, mother!" I cried; "doesn't she look
like a line of poetry?"

"You foolish, romantic child!" quoth mother. "She looks, to me,
like a very ordinary line of prose. A slice of bread and butter and a
piece of gingerbread mean more to her than these elaborate ringlets
possibly can. They get in her eyes, and make her neck cold; see, they
are dripping with water, and the child is all in a shiver."

So saying, mother folded a towel round its neck, to catch the falling
drops, and went for bread and butter, of which the child consumed a
quantity that, was absolutely appalling. To crown all, the ungrateful
little thing would not so much as look at me from that moment, but
clung to mother, turning its back upon me in supreme contempt.

Moral.-Mothers occasionally know more than their daughters do.



Chapter 6

VI.

JANUARY 24. A Message came yesterday morning from Susan Green to the
effect that she had had a dreadful fall, and was half killed. Mother
wanted to set off at once to see her, but I would not let her go, as
she has one of her worst colds. She then asked me to go in her place.
I turned up my nose at the bare thought, though I dare say it turns
up enough on its own account.

"Oh, mother!" I said, reproachfully "that dirty old woman!"

Mother made no answer, and I sat down at the piano, and played a
little. But I only played discords.

"Do you think it is my duty to run after such horrid old women?" I
asked mother, at last.

"I think, dear, you must make your own duties," she said kindly. "I
dare say that at your age I should have made a great deal out of my
personal repugnance to such a woman as Susan, and very little out of
her sufferings."

I believe I am the most fastidious creature in the world. Sick-rooms
with their intolerable smells of camphor, and vinegar and mustard,
their gloom and their whines and their groans, actually make me
shudder. But was it not just such fastidiousness that made Cha-no, I
won't utter his name----that made somebody weary of my possibilities?
And has that terrible lesson really done me no good?

JAN. 26.-No sooner had I written the above than I scrambled into my
cloak and bonnet, and flew, on the wings of holy indignation, to
Susan Green. Such wings fly fast, and got me a little out of breath.
I found her lying on that nice white bed of hers, in a frilled cap
and night-gown. It seems she fell from her ladder in climbing to the
dismal den where she sleeps, and lay all night in great distress with
some serious internal injury. I found her groaning and complaining in
a fearful way.

"Are you in such pain?" I asked, as kindly as I could.

"It isn't the pain," she said, "it isn't the pain. It's the way my
nice bed is going to wreck and ruin, and the starch all getting out
of my frills that I fluted with my own hands. And the doctor's bill,
and the medicines; oh, dear, dear, dear!"

Just then the doctor came in. After examining her, he said to a woman
who seemed to have charge of her:

"Are you the nurse?"

"Oh, no, I only stepped in to see what I could do for her."

"Who is to be with her to-night, then?"

Nobody knew.

"I will send a nurse, then," he said. "But some one else will be
needed also," he added, looking at me.

"I will stay," I said. But my heart died within me.

The doctor took me aside.

"Her injuries are very serious," he said. "If she has any friends,
they ought to be sent for."

"You don't mean that she is going to die?" I asked.

"I fear she is. But not immediately." He took leave, and I went back
to the bedside. I saw there no longer a snuffy, repulsive old woman,
but a human being about to make that mysterious journey a far country
whence there is no return. Oh, how I wished mother were there!

"Susan," I said, "have you any relatives?"

"No, I haven't," she answered sharply. "And if I had they needn't
come prowling around me. I don't want no relations about my body."

"Would you like to see Dr. Cabot?"

"What should I want of Dr. Cabot? Don't tease, child."

Considering the deference with which she had heretofore treated me,
this was quite a new order of things.

I sat down and tried to pray for her, silently, in my heart. Who was
to go with her on that long journey, and where was it to end?

The woman who had been caring for her now went away, and it was
growing dark. I sat still listening to my own heart, which beat till
it half choked me.

"What were you and the doctor whispering about?" she suddenly burst
out.

"He asked me, for one thing, if you had any friends that could be
sent for."

"I've been my own best friend," she returned. "Who'd have raked and
scraped and hoarded and counted for Susan Green if I hadn't ha' done
it? I've got enough to make me comfortable as long as I live, and
when I lie on my dying bed."

"But you can't carry it with you," I said. This highly original
remark was all I had courage to utter.

"I wish I could," she cried. "I suppose you think I talk awful. They
say you are getting most to be as much of a saint as your ma. It's
born in some, and in some it ain't. Do get a light. It's lonesome
here in the dark, and cold."

I was thankful enough to enliven the dark room with light and fire.
But I saw now that the thin, yellow, hard face had changed sadly. She
fixed her two little black eyes on me, evidently startled by the
expression of my face.

"Look here, child, I ain't hurt to speak of, am I?"

"The doctor says you are hurt seriously."

My tone must have said more than my words did for she caught me by
the wrist and held me fast.

"He didn't say nothing about my-about it being dangerous? I ain't
dangerous, am I?"

I felt ready to sink.

"Oh Susan!" I gasped out; "you haven't any time to lose. You're
going, you're going!"  "Going!" she cried; "going where? You don't
mean to say I'm a-dying? Why, it beats all my calculations. I was
going to live ever so years, and save up ever so much money, and when
my time come, I was going to put on my best fluted night-gown and
night-cap, and lay my head on my handsome pillow, and draw the
clothes up over me, neat and tidy, and die decent. But here's my bed
all in a toss, and my frills all in a crumple and my room all upside
down, and bottles of medicine setting around alongside of my vases,
and nobody here but you, just a girl, and nothing else!"

All this came out by jerks, as it were, and at intervals.

"Don't talk so!" I fairly screamed. "Pray, pray to God to have mercy
on you!"

She looked at me, bewildered, but yet as if the truth had reached her
at last.

"Pray yourself!" she said, eagerly. "I don't know how. I can't
think. Oh, my time's come my time's come! And I ain't ready! I ain't
ready! Get down on your knees and pray with all your, might and
main."

And I did; she holding my wrist tightly in hard hand. All at once I
felt her hold relax. After that the next thing I knew I was lying on
the floor and somebody was dashing water in my face.

It was the nurse. She had come at last, and found me by the side of
the bed, where I had fallen, and had been trying to revive me ever
since. I started up and looked about me. The nurse was closing
Susan's eyes in a professional way, and performing other little
services of the sort. The room wore an air of perfect desolation. The
clothes Susan had on when she fell lay in a forlorn heap on a chair;
her shoes and stockings were thrown hither and thither; the mahogany
bureau, in which she had taken so much pride, was covered with vials,
to make room for which some pretty trifles had been hastily thrust
aside. I remembered what I had once said to Mrs. Cabot about having
tasteful things about me, with a sort of shudder. What a mockery they
are in the awful presence of death!

Mother met me with open arms when I reached home. She was much
shocked at what I had to tell, and at my having encountered such a
scene alone I should have felt myself quite a heroine under her
caresses if I had not been overcome with bitter regret that I had
not, with firmness and dignity turned poor Susan's last thoughts to
her Saviour. Oh, how could I, through miserable cowardice, let those
precious moments slip by!

Feb 27.-I have learned one thing by yesterday's experience that is
worth knowing. It is this: duty looks more repelling at a distance
than when fairly faced and met. Of course I have read the lines,

    "Nor know we anything so fair
     As is the smile upon thy face;"

but I seem to be one of the stupid sort, who never apprehend a thing
till they experience it. Now, however, I have seen the smile, and
find it so "fair," that I shall gladly plod through many a hardship
and trial to meet it again.

Poor Susan! Perhaps God heard my prayer for her soul, and revealed
Himself to her at the very last moment.

March 2.-Such a strange thing has happened! Susan Green left a will,
bequeathing her precious savings to whoever offered the last prayer
in her hearing! I do not want, I never could touch a penny of that
hardly-earned store; and if I did, no earthly motive would tempt me
to tell a human being, that it was offered by me, an inexperienced,
trembling girl, driven to it by mere desperation! So it has gone to
Dr. Cabot, who will not use it for himself, I am sure, but will be
delighted to have it to give to poor people, who really besiege him.
The last time he called to see her he talked and prayed with her, and
says she seemed pleased and grateful, and promised to be more regular
at church, which she had been, ever since.

March 28.-I feel all out of sorts. Mother says it is owing to the
strain I went through at Susan's dying bed. She wants me to go to
visit my aunt Mary, who is always urging me to come. But I do not
like to leave my little Sunday scholars, nor to give mother the
occasion to deny herself in order to meet the expense of such a long
journey. Besides, I should have to have some new dresses, a new
bonnet, and lots of things.

To-day Dr. Cabot has sent me some directions for which I have been
begging him a long time. Lest I should wear out this precious letter
by reading it over, I will copy it here. After alluding to my
complaint that I still "saw men as trees walking," he says:

"Yet he who first uttered this complaint had had his eyes opened by
the Son of God, and so have you. Now He never leaves His work
incomplete, and He will gradually lead you into clear and open
vision, if you will allow Him to do it. I say gradually, because I
believe this to be His usual method, while I do not deny that there
are cases where light suddenly bursts in like a flood. To return to
the blind man. When Jesus found that his cure was not complete, He put
His hands again upon his eyes, and made him look up; and he was
restored, and saw every man clearly. Now this must be done for you;
and in order to have it done you must go to Christ Himself, not to
one of His servants. Make your complaint, tell Him how obscure
everything still looks to you, and beg Him to complete your cure He
may see fit to try your faith and patience by delaying this
completion; but meanwhile you are safe in His presence, and while led
by His hand; He will excuse the mistakes you make, and pity your
falls. But you will imagine that it is best that He should at once
enable you to see clearly. If it is, you may be sure He will do it.
He never makes mistakes. But He often deals far differently with His
disciples. He lets them grope their way in the dark until they fully
learn how blind they are, how helpless, how absolutely in need of
Him.

"What His methods will be with you I cannot foretell. But you may be
sure that He never works in an arbitrary way. He has a reason for
everything He does. You may not understand why He leads you now in
this way and now in that, but you may, nay, you must believe that
perfection is stamped on His every act.

"I am afraid that you are in danger of falling into an error only too
common among young Christians. You acknowledge that there has been
enmity to towards God in your secret soul, and that one of the first
steps towards peace is to become reconciled to Him and to have your
sins forgiven for Christ's sake. This done, you settle down with the
feeling that the great work of life is done, and that your salvation
is sure. Or, if not sure, that your whole business is to study your
own case to see whether you are really in a state of grace. Many
persons never get beyond this point. They spend their whole time in
asking the question:

"'Do I love the Lord or no?
  Am I His or am I not?'

"I beg you, my dear child, if you are doing this aimless, useless
work, to stop short at once. Life is too precious to spend in a
tread-mill.. Having been pardoned by your God and Saviour, the next
thing you have to do is to show your gratitude for this infinite
favor by consecrating yourself entirely to Him, body, soul, and
spirit. This is the least you can do. He has bought you with a price,
and you are no longer your own. 'But,' you may reply, 'this is
contrary to my nature. I love my own way. I desire ease and pleasure;
I desire to go to heaven, to be carried thither on a bed of flowers.
Can I not give myself so far to God as to feel a sweet sense of peace
with Him, and be sure of final salvation, and yet, to a certain
extent, indulge and gratify myself? If I give myself entirely away in
Him and lose all ownership in myself, He may deny me many things I
greatly desire. He may make my life hard and wearisome, depriving me
of all that now makes it agreeable.' But, I reply, this is no matter
of parley and discussion; it is not optional with God's children
whether they will pay Him a part of the price they owe Him, and keep
back the rest. He asks, and He has a right to ask, for all you have
and all you are. And if you shrink from what is involved in such a
surrender, you should fly to Him at once and never rest till He has
conquered this secret disinclination to give to Him as freely and as
fully as He has given to you. It is true that such an act of
consecration on your part may involve no little future discipline and
correction. As soon as you become the Lord's by your own deliberate
and conscious act, He will begin that process of sanctification which
is to make you holy as He is holy, perfect as He is perfect. He
becomes at once, your physician as well as your dearest and best
Friend, but He will use no painful remedy that can be avoided.
Remember that it is His will that you should be sanctified, and that
the work of making you holy is His, not yours. At the same time you
are not to sit with folded hands, waiting for this blessing. You are
to avoid laying hindrances in His way, and you are to exercise faith
in Him as just as able and just as willing to give you sanctification
as He was to give you redemption. And now if you ask how you may know
that you have truly consecrated yourself to Him, I reply, observe
every indication of His will concerning you, no matter how
trivial, and see whether you at once close in with that will. Lay
down this principle as a law--God does nothing arbitrary. If He takes
away your health, for instance, it is because He has some reason for
doing so; and this is true of everything you value; and if you have
real faith in Him you will not insist on knowing this reason. If you
find, in the course of daily events, that your self-consecration was
not perfect-that is, that your will revolts at His will-do not be
discouraged, but fly to your Saviour and stay in His presence till
you obtain the spirit in which He cried in His hour of anguish,
'Father, if Thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless,
not my will but Thine be done.' Every time you do this it will be
easier to do it; every such consent to suffer will bring you nearer
and nearer to Him; and in this nearness to Him you will find such
peace, such blessed, sweet peace, as will make your life infinitely
happy, no matter what may be its mere outside conditions. Just think,
my dear Katy, of the honor and the joy of having your will one with
the Divine will, and so becoming changed into Christ's image from
glory to glory!

"But I cannot say, in a letter, the tithe of what I want to say.
Listen to my sermons from week to week and glean from them all the
instruction you can, remembering that they are preached to you.

"In reading the Bible I advise you to choose detached passages, or
even one verse a day, rather whole chapters. Study every word, ponder
and pray over it till you have got out of it all the truth it
contains.

"As to the other devotional reading, it is better to settle down on a
few favorite authors, and read their works over and over and over
until you have digested their thoughts and made them your own.

"It has been said 'that a fixed, inflexible will is a great
assistance in a holy life.'

"You can will to choose for your associates those who are most devout
and holy.

"You can will to read books that will stimulate you in your Christian
life, rather than those that merely amuse.

"You can will to use every means of grace appointed by God.

"You can will to spend much time in prayer, without regard to your
frame at the moment.

"You can will to prefer a religion of principle to one of mere
feeling; in other, words, to obey the will of God when no comfortable
glow of emotion accompanies your obedience.

"You cannot will to possess the spirit of Christ; that must come as
His gift; but you can choose to study His life, and to imitate it.
This will infallibly lead to such self-denying work as visiting the
poor, nursing the sick, giving of your time and money to the needy,
and the like.

"If the thought of such self-denial is repugnant to you, remember
that it is enough for the disciple to be as his Lord. And let me
assure you that as you penetrate the labyrinth of life in pursuit of
Christian duty, you will often be surprised and charmed by meeting
your Master Himself amid its windings and turnings, and receive His
soul-inspiring smile. Or, I should rather say, you will always meet
Him wherever you go."

I have read this letter again and again. It has taken such hold of me
that I can think of nothing else. The idea of seeking holiness had
never so much as crossed my mind. And even now it seems like
presumption for such a one as I to utter so sacred a word. And I
shrink from committing myself to such a pursuit, lest after a time I
should fall back into the old routine. And I have an undefined,
wicked dread of being singular, as well as a certain terror of
self-denial and loss of all liberty. But no choice seems left to me.
Now that my duty has been clearly pointed out to me, I do not stand
where I did before. And I feel, mingled with my indolence and love of
ease and pleasure, some drawings towards a higher and better life.
There is one thing I can do, and that is to pray that Jesus would do
for me what He did for the blind man-put His hands yet again upon my
eyes and make me to see clearly. And I will.

MARCH, 30.-Yes, I have prayed, and He has heard me. I see that I have
no right to live for myself, and that I must live for Him. I have
given myself to Him as I never did before, and have entered, as it
were, a new world. I was very happy when I began to believe in His
love for me, and that He had redeemed me. But this new happiness is
deeper; it involves something higher than getting to heaven at last,
which has, hitherto, been my great aim.

March 31.-The more I pray, and the more I read the Bible, the more I
feel my ignorance. And the more earnestly I desire holiness, the more
utterly unholy I see myself to be. But I have pledged myself to the
Lord, and I must pay my vows, cost what it may.

I have begun to read Taylor's "Holy Living and Dying." A month ago I
should have found it a tedious, dry book. But I am reading it with a
sort of avidity, like one seeking after hid treasure. Mother,
observing what I was doing, advised me to read it straight through,
but to mingle a passage now and then with chapters from other books.
She suggested my beginning on Baxter's "Saints' Rest," and of that I
have read every word. I shall read it over, as Dr. Cabot advised,
till I have fully caught its spirit. Even this one reading has taken
away my lingering fear of death, and made heaven awfully attractive.
I never mean to read worldly books again, and my music and drawing I
have given up forever.



Chapter 7

VII.

Mother asked me last evening to sing and play to her. I was
embarrassed to know how to excuse myself without telling her my real
reason for declining. But somehow she got it out of me.

"One need not be fanatical in order to be religious," she said.

"Is it fanatical to give up all for God?" I asked.

"What is it to give up all?" she asked, in reply.

"Why, to deny one's self every gratification and indulgence in order
to mortify one's natural inclinations, and to live entirely for Him."

"God is then a hard Master, who allows his children no liberty," she
replied. "Now let us see where this theory will lead you. In the
first place you must shut your eyes to all the beautiful things He
has made. You must shut your eyes to all the harmonies He has
ordained. You must shut your heart against all sweet human
affections. You have a body, it is true, and it may revolt at such
bondage--"

"We are told to keep under the body," I interrupted.

"Oh, mother, don't hinder me! You know my love for music is a
passion and that it is my snare and temptation. And how can I spend
my whole time in reading the Bible and praying, if I go on with my
drawing? It may do for other people to serve both God and Mammon, but
not for me. I must belong wholly to the world or wholly to Christ."

Mother said no more, and I went on with my reading. But somehow my
book seemed to have lost its flavor. Besides, it was time to retire
for my evening devotions which I never put off now till the last
thing at night, as I used to do. When I came down, Mother was lying
on the sofa, by which I knew she was not well. I felt troubled that I
had refused to sing to her. Think of the money she had spent on that
part of my education! I went to her and kissed her with a pang of
terror. What if she were going to be very sick, and to die?

"It is nothing, darling," she said, "nothing at all. I am tired, and
felt a little faint."

I looked at her anxiously, and the bare thought that she might die
and leave me alone was so terrible that I could hardly help crying
out. And I saw, as by a flash of lightning, that if God took her from
me, I could not, should not say: Thy will be done.

But she was better after taking a few drops of lavender, and what
color she has came back to her dear sweet face.

APRIL 12.-Dr. Cabot's letter has lost all its power over me. A stone
has more feeling than I. I don't love to pray. I am sick and tired of
this dreadful struggle after holiness; good books are all alike, flat
and meaningless. But I must have something to absorb and carry me
away, and I have come back to my music and my drawing with new zest.
Mother was right in warning me against giving them up. Maria Kelley
is teaching me to paint in oil-colors, and says I have a natural gift
for it.

APRIL 13.-Mother asked me to go to church with her last evening, and I
said I did not want to go. She looked surprised and troubled.

"Are you not well, dear?" she asked.

"I don't know. Yes. I suppose I am. But I could not be still at
church five minutes. I am nervous that I feel as if I should fly."

"I see how it is," she said; "you have forgotten that body of yours,
of which I reminded you, and have been trying to live as if you were
all soul and spirit. You have been straining every nerve to acquire
perfection, whereas this is God's gift, and one that He is willing to
give you, fully and freely."

"I have done seeking for that or anything else that is good," I said,
despondently. "And so I have gone back to my music and everything
else."

"Here is just the rock upon which you split," she returned. "You
speak of going back to your music as if that implied going away from
God. You rush from one extreme to another. The only true way to live
in this world, constituted just as we are, is to make all our
employments subserve the one great end and aim of existence, namely,
to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. But in order to do this we
must be wise task-masters, and not require of ourselves what we
cannot possibly perform. Recreation we must have. Otherwise the
strings of our soul, wound up to an unnatural tension, will break."

"Oh, I do wish," I cried, "that God had given us plain rules, about
which we could make no mistake!"

"I think His rules are plain," she replied. "And some liberty of
action He must leave us, or we should become mere machines. I think
that those who love Him, and wait upon Him day by day, learn His will
almost imperceptibly, and need not go astray."

"But, mother, music and drawing are sharp-edged tools in such hands
as mine. I cannot be moderate in my use of them. And the more I
delight in them, the less I delight in God."

"Yes, this is human nature. But God's divine nature will supplant it,
if we only consent to let Him work in us of His own good pleasure."

New York, April 16.-After all, mother has come off conqueror, and
here I am at Aunty's. After our quiet, plain little home, in our
quiet little town, this seems like a new world. The house is large,
but is as full as it can hold. Aunty has six children her own, and
has adopted two. She says she ways meant to imitate the old woman who
lived in a shoe. She reminds me of mother, and yet she is very
different; full of fun and energy; flying about the house as on
wings, with a kind, bright word for everybody. All her household
affairs go on like clock-work; the children are always nicely
dressed; nobody ever seems out of humor; nobody is ever sick. Aunty
is the central object round which every body revolves; you can't
forget her a moment, she is always doing something for you, and then
her unflagging good humor and cheerfulness keep you good-humored and
cheerful. I don't wonder Uncle Alfred loves her so.

I hope I shall have just such a home. I mean this is the sort of home
I should like if I ever married, which I never mean to do. I should
like to be just such a bright, loving wife as Aunty is; to have my
husband lean on me as Uncle leans on her; to have just as many
children, and to train them as wisely and kindly us she does hers.
Then, I should feel that I had not been born in vain, but had a high
and sacred mission on earth. But as it is, I must just pick up what
scraps of usefulness I can, and let the rest go.

APRIL 18.-Aunty says I sit writing and reading and thinking too much,
and wants me to go out more. I tell her I don't feel strong enough to
go out much. She says that is all nonsense, and drags me out. I get
tired, and hungry, and sleep like a baby a month old. I see now
mother's wisdom and kindness in making me leave home when I did. I
had veered about from point to point till I was nearly ill. Now Aunty
keeps me well by making me go out, and dear Dr. Cabot's precious
letter can work a true and not a morbid work in my soul. I am very
happy. I have delightful talks with Aunty, who sets me right at this
point and at that; and it is beautiful to watch her home-life and to
see with what sweet unconsciousness she carries her religion into
every detail. I am sure it must do me good to be here; and yet, if I
am growing better how slowly, how slowly, it is! Somebody has said
that 'our course heavenward is like the plan of the zealous pilgrims
of old, who for every three steps forward, took one backward.'

APRIL 30.-Aunty's baby, my dear father's namesake, and hitherto the
merriest little fellow I ever saw, was taken sick last night, very
suddenly. She sent for the doctor at once, who would not say
positively what was the matter, but this morning pronounced it
scarlet fever. The three youngest have all come down with it to-day.
If they were my children, I should be in a perfect worry and flurry.
Indeed, I am as it is. But Aunty is as bright and cheerful as ever.
She flies from one to another, and keeps up their spirits with her
own gayety. I am mortified to find that at such a time as this I can
think of myself, and that I find it irksome to be shut up in
sick-rooms, instead of walking, driving, visiting, and the like. But,
as Dr. Cabot says, I can now choose to imitate my Master, who spent
His whole life in doing good, and I do hope, too, to be of some
little use to Aunty, after her kindness to me.

MAY 1.-The doctor says the children are doing as well as, could be
expected. He made a short visit this morning, as it is Sunday. If I
had ever seen him before I should say I had some unpleasant
association with him. I wonder Aunty employs such a great clumsy man.
But she says he is good, and very skillful. I wish I did not take
such violent likes and dislikes to people. I want my religion to
change me in every respect.

MAY 2.-Oh, I know now! This is the very who was so rude at
Sunday-school, and afterwards made such a nice address to the
children. Well he may know how to speak in public, but I am sure he
doesn't in private. I never knew such a shut-up man.

MAY 4.-I have my hands as full as they can hold. The children have
got so fond of me, and one or the other is in my lap nearly all the
time. I sing to them, tell them stories, build block-houses, and
relieve Aunty all I can. Dull and poky as the doctor is, I am not
afraid of him, for he never notices anything I say or do, so while he
is holding solemn consultations with Aunty in one corner, I can sing
and talk all sorts of nonsense to my little pets in mine. What
fearful black eyes he has, and what masses of black hair!

This busy life quite suits me, now I have got used to it. And it
sweetens every bit of work to think that I am doing it in humble,
far-off, yet real imitation of Jesus. I am indeed really and truly
happy.

MAY 14.-It is now two weeks since little Raymond was taken sick, and I
have lived in the nursery all the time, though Aunty has tried to
make me go out. Little Emma was taken down to-day, though she has
been kept on the third floor all the time I feel dreadfully myself.
But this hard, cold doctor of Aunty's is so taken up with the
children that he never so much as looks at me. I have been in a
perfect shiver all day, but these merciless little folks call for
stories as eagerly as ever. Well, let me be a comfort to them if I
can! I hate selfishness more and more, and am shocked to see how
selfish I have been.

MAY 15.-I was in a burning fever all night, and my head ached, and my
throat was and is very sore. If knew I was going to die I would burn
up this journal first. I would not have any one see it for the world.

MAY 24.-Dr. Elliott asked me on Sunday morning a week ago if I still
felt well. For answer I behaved like a goose, and burst out crying.
Aunty looked more anxious than I have seen her look yet, and
reproached herself for having allowed me to be with the children. She
took me by one elbow, and the doctor by the other, and they marched
me off to my own room, where I was put through the usual routine on
such occasions, and then ordered to bed. I fell asleep immediately
and slept all day. The doctor came to see me in the evening, and made
a short, stiff little visit, gave me a powder, and said thought I
should soon be better.

I had two such visits from him the next day, when I began to feel
quite like myself again, and in spite of his grave, staid deportment,
could not help letting my good spirits run away with me in a style
that evidently shocked him. He says persons nursing scarlet fever
often have such little attacks as mine; indeed every one of the
servants have had a sore throat and headache.

MAY 25.-This morning, just as the doctor shuffled in on his big feet,
it came over me how ridiculously I must have looked the day I was
taken sick, being walked off between Aunty and himself, crying like a
baby. I burst out laughing, and no consideration I could make to
myself would stop me. I pinched myself, asked myself how I should
feel if one of the children should die, and used other kindred
devices all to no purpose. At last the doctor, gravity personified as
he is, joined in, though not knowing in the least what he was
laughing at. Then he said,

"After this, I suppose, I shall have to pronounce you convalescent."

"Oh, no!" I cried. "I am very-sick indeed."

"This looks like it, to be sure!" said Aunty.

"I suppose this will be your last visit, Dr. Elliott," I went on,
"and I am glad of it. After the way I behaved the day I was taken
sick, I have been ashamed to look you in the face. But I really felt
dreadfully."

He made no answer whatever. I don't suppose he would speak a little
flattering word by way of putting one in good humor with one's self
for the whole world!

JUNE 1.-We are all as well as ever, but the doctor keeps some of the
children still confined to the house for fear of bad consequences
following the fever. He visits them twice a day for the same reason,
or at least under that pretense, but I really believe he comes
because he has got the habit of coming, and because he admires Aunty
so much. She has a real affection for him, and is continually asking
me if I don't like this and that quality in him which I can't see at
all. We begin to drive out again. The weather is, very warm, but I
feel perfectly well.

JUNE 2.-After the children's dinner to-day I took care of them while
their nurse got hers and Aunty went to lie down, as she is all tired
out. We were all full of life and fun, and some of the little ones
wanted me to play a play of their own invention, which was to lie
down on the floor, cover my face with a handkerchief, and make
believe I was dead. They were to gather about me, and I was suddenly
to come to life and jump up and try to catch them as they all ran
scampering and screaming about. We had played in this interesting way
for some time, and my hair, which I keep in nice order nowadays, was
pulled down and flying every way; when in marched the doctor. I
started up and came to life quickly enough when I heard his step,
looking red and angry, no doubt.

"I should think you might have knocked, Dr. Elliott," I said, with
much displeasure.

"I ask your pardon; I knocked several times," he returned. "I need
hardly ask how my little patients are."

"No," I replied, still ruffled, and making desperate efforts to get
my hair into some sort of order. "They are as well as possible."

"I came a little earlier than usual to-day," he went on, "because I
am called to visit my uncle, Dr. Cabot, who is in a very critical
state of health."

"Dr. Cabot!" I repeated, bursting into tears.

"Compose yourself, I entreat," he said; "I hope that I may be able
to relieve him. At all events--"

"At all events, if you let him die it will break my heart," I cried
passionately. "Don't wait another moment; go this instant."

"I cannot go this instant," he replied. "The boat does not leave
until four o'clock. And if I may be allowed, as a physician, to say
one word, that my brief acquaintance hardly justifies, I do wish to
warn you that unless you acquire more self-control-"

"Oh, I know that I have a quick temper, and that I spoke very rudely
to you just now," I interrupted, not a little startled by the
seriousness of his manner.

"I did not refer to your temper," he said. "I meant your whole
passionate nature. Your vehement loves and hates, your ecstasies and
your despondencies; your disposition to throw yourself headlong into
whatever interests you."

"I would rather have too little self-control," I retorted,
resentfully, "than to be as cold as a stone, and as hard as a rock,
and as silent as the grave, like some people I know."

His countenance fell; he looked disappointed, even pained.

"I shall probably see your mother," he said, turning to go; "your
aunt wishes me to call on her; have you any message?"

"No," I said.

Another pained, disappointed look made me begin to recollect myself.
I was sorry, oh! so sorry, for my anger and rudeness. I ran after
him, into the hall, my eyes full of tears, holding out both hands,
which he took in both his.

"Don't go until you have forgiven me for being so angry!" I cried.
"Indeed, Dr. Elliott, though you not be able to believe it, I am
trying to do right all the time!"

"I do believe it," he said earnestly.

"Then tell me that you forgive me!"

"If I once begin, I shall be tempted to tell something else," he
said, looking me through and through with those great dusky eyes.
"And I will tell it," he went on, his grasp on my hands growing
firmer-"It is easy to forgive when one loves." I pulled my hands
away, and burst out crying again.

"Oh, Dr. Elliott this is dreadful!" I said. "You do not, you cannot
love me! You are so much older than I am! So grave and silent! You
are not in earnest?"

"I am only too much so," he said, and went quietly out.

I went back to the nursery. The children rushed upon me, and insisted
that I should "play die." I let them pull me about as they pleased. I
only wished I could play it in earnest.



Chapter 8

VIII

JUNE 28.

MOTHER writes me that Dr. Cabot is out of danger, Dr. Elliott having
thrown new light on his case, and performed some sort of an operation
that relieved him at once. I am going home. Nothing would tempt me to
encounter those black eyes again. Besides, the weather is growing
warm, and Aunty is getting ready to go out of town with the children.

JUNE 29.-Aunty insisted on knowing why I was hurrying home so
suddenly, and at last got it out of me inch by inch. On the whole it
was a relief to have some one to speak to.

"Well!" she said, and leaned back in her chair in a fit of musing.

"Is that all you are going to say, Aunty?" I ventured to ask at last.

"No, I have one more remark to add," she said, "and it is this: I
don't know which of you has behaved most ridiculously. It would
relieve me to give you each a good shaking."

"I think Dr. Elliot has behaved ridiculously," I said, "and he has
made me most unhappy."

"Unhappy!" she repeated. "I don't wonder you are unhappy. You have
pained and wounded one of the noblest men that walks the earth."

"It is not my fault. I never tried to make him like me."

"Yes, you did. You were perfectly bewitching whenever he came here.
No mortal man could help being fascinated."

I knew this was not true, and bitterly resented Aunty's injustice.

"If I wanted to 'fascinate' or 'bewitch' a man," I cried, "I should
not choose one old enough to be my father, nor one who was as
uninteresting, awkward and stiff as Dr. Elliott. Besides, how should
I know he was not married? If I thought anything about it at all, I
certainly thought of him as a middle-aged man, settled down with a
wife, long ago.

"In the first place he is not old, or even middle aged. He is not
more than twenty-seven or eight. As to his being uninteresting,
perhaps he is to you, who don't know him. And if he were a married
man, what business had he to come here to see as he has done?"

"I did not know he came to see me; he never spoke to me. And I always
said I would never marry a doctor."

"We all say scores of things we live to repent," she replied. "But I
must own that the doctor acted quite out of character when he
expected you to take a fancy to him on such short notice, you
romantic little thing. Of course knowing him as little as you do, and
only seeing him in sick-rooms, you could not have done otherwise than
as you did."

"Thank you, Aunty," I said, running and throwing my arms around her;
"thank you with all my heart. And now won't you take back what you
said about my trying to fascinate him?"

"I suppose I must, you dear child," she said. "I was not half in
earnest. The truth is I am so fond of you both that the idea of your
misunderstanding each other annoys me extremely. Why, you were made
for each other. He would tone you down and keep you straight, and you
would stimulate him and keep him awake."

"I don't want to be toned down or kept straight," I remonstrated. "I
hate prigs who keep their wives in leading-strings. I do not mean to
marry any one, but if I should be left to such a piece of folly, it
must be to one who will take me for better for worse; just as I am,
and not as a wild plant for him to prune till he has got it into a
shape to suit him now, Aunty, promise me one thing. Never mention
Dr. Elliott's name to me again."

"I shall make no such promise," she replied, laughing. "I like him,
and I like to talk about him and the more you hate and despise him
the more I shall love and admire him. I only wish my Lucy were old
enough to be his wife, and that he could fancy her; but he never
could!"

"On the contrary I should think that little model of propriety would
just suit him," I exclaimed.

"Don't make fun of Lucy," Aunty said, shaking her head. "She is a
dear good child, after all."

"After all" means this (for what with my own observation, and what
Aunty has told me, Lucy's portrait is easy to paint) The child is the
daughter of a man who died from a lingering illness caused by an
accident. She entered the family at a most inauspicious moment, two
days after this accident. From the outset she comprehended the
situation and took the ground that a character of irreproachable
dignity and propriety became an infant coming at such a time. She
never cried, never put improper objects into her mouth, never bumped
her head, or scratched herself. Once put to bed at night, you knew
nothing more of her till such time next day as you found it
convenient to attend to her. If you forgot her existence, as was not
seldom the case under the circumstances, she vegetated on, unmoved.
It is possible that pangs of hunger sometimes assailed her, and it is
a fact that she teethed, had the measles and the whooping-cough. But
these minute ripples on her infant life only showed the more clearly
what a waveless, placid little sea it was. She got her teeth in the
order laid down in "Dewees on Children"; her measles came out on the
appointed day like well-behaved measles as they were and retired
decently and in order, as measles should. Her whooping-cough had a
well-bred, methodical air, and left her conqueror of the field. As
the child passed out of her babyhood, she remained still her mother's
appendage and glory; a monument of pure white marble, displaying to
the human race one instance at least of perfect parental training.
Those smooth, round hands were always magically clean; the dress
immaculate and uncrumpled; the hair dutifully shining and tidy. She
was a model child, as she had been a model baby. No slamming of
doors, no litter of carpets, no pattering of noisy feet on the
stairs, no headless dolls, no soiled or torn books indicated her
presence. Her dolls were subject to a methodical training, not unlike
her own. They rose, they were dressed, they took the air, they
retired for the night, with clock-like regularity. At the advanced
age of eight, she ceased occupying herself with such trifles, and
began a course of instructive reading. Her lessons were received in
mute submission, like medicine; so many doses, so many times a day.
An agreeable interlude of needlework was afforded, and Dorcas-like,
many were the garments that resulted for the poor. Give her the very
eyes out of your head, cut off your right hand for her if you choose,
but don't expect a gush of enthusiasm that would crumple your collar;
she would as soon strangle herself as run headlong to embrace you. If
she has any passions or emotions, they are kept under; but who asks
for passion in blanc-mange, or seeks emotion in a comfortable
apple-pudding?

When her father had been dead a year, her mother married a man with a
large family of children and a very small purse. Lucy had a hard time
of it, especially as her step-father, a quick, impulsive man, took a
dislike to her. Aunty had no difficulty persuading them to give the
child to her. She took from the purest motives, and it does seem as
if she ought to have more reward than she gets. She declares,
however, that she has all the reward she could ask in the conviction
that God accepts this attempt to please Him.

Lucy is now nearly fourteen; very large of her age, with a dead white
skin, pale blue eyes, and a little light hair. To hear her talk is
most edifying. Her babies are all "babes"; she never begins anything
but "commences" it; she never cries, she "weeps"; never gets up in
the morning, but "rises." But what am I writing all this for? Why, to
escape my own thoughts, which are anything but agreeable companions,
and to put off answering the question which must be answered, "Have I
really made a mistake in refusing Dr. Elliott? Could I not, in time,
have come to love a man who has so honored me?"

JULY 5.-Here I am again, safely at home, and very pleasant it seems
to be with dear mother again. I have told her about Dr. E. She says
very little about it one way or the other.

JULY 10.-Mother sees that I am restless and out of sorts. "What is
it, dear?" she asked, this morning. "Has Dr. Elliott anything to do
with the unsettled state you are in?"

"Why, no, mother," I answered. "My going away has broken up all my
habits; that's all. Still if I knew Dr. Elliott did not care much,
and was beginning to forget it, I dare say I should feel better."

"If you were perfectly sure that you could never return his
affection," she said, "you were quite right in telling him so at
once; But if you had any misgivings on the subject, it would have
been better to wait, and to ask God to direct you."

Yes, it would. But at the moment I had no misgivings. In my usual
headlong style I settled one of the most weighty questions of my
life, without reflection, without so much as one silent appeal to
God, to tell me how to act. And now I have forever repelled, and
thrown away a heart that truly loved me. He will go his way and I
shall go mine. He never will know, what I am only just beginning to
know myself, that I yearn after his love with unutterable yearning.

I am not going to sit down in sentimental despondency to weep over
this irreparable past. No human being could forgive such folly as
mine; but God can. In my sorrowfulness and loneliness I fly to Him,
and find, what is better than earthly felicity, the sweetest peace.
He allowed me to bring upon myself, in one hasty moment, a shadow out
of which I shall not soon pass, but He pities and He forgives me, and
I have had many precious moments when I could say sincerely and
joyfully, "Whom have I in heaven but Thee, and there is none upon
earth that I desire besides Thee."

With a character still so undisciplined as mine, I seriously doubt
whether I could have made him who has honored me with his unmerited
affection. Sometimes I think I am as impetuous and as quick-tempered
as ever; I get angry with dear mother, and with James even, if they
oppose me; how unfit, then, I am to become the mistress of a
household and the wife of a good a man!

How came he to love me? I cannot, cannot imagine!

August 31.-The last day of the very happiest summer I ever spent. If
I had only been willing to believe the testimony of others I might
have been just as happy long ago. But I wanted to have all there was
in God and all there was in the world, at once, and there was a
constant, painful struggle between the two. I hope that struggle is
now over. I deliberately choose and prefer God. I have found a sweet
peace in trying to please Him such as I never conceived of. I would
not change it for all the best things this world can give.

But I have a great deal to learn. I am like a little child who cannot
run to get what he wants, but approaches it step by step, slowly,
timidly-and yet approaches it. I am amazed at the patience of my
blessed Master and Teacher, but how I love His school!

September.-This, too, has been a delightful month in a certain sense.
Amelia's marriage, at which I had to be present, upset me a little,
but it was but a little ruffle on a deep sea of peace.

I saw Dr. Cabot to-day. He is quite well again, and speaks of Dr.
Elliott's skill with rapture. He asked about my Sunday scholars and
my poor folks, etc., and I could not help letting out a little of the
new joy that has taken possession of me.

"This is as it should be," he said. "I should be sorry to see a person
of your temperament enthusiastic in everything save religion. Do not
be discouraged if you still have some ups and downs. 'He that is down
need fear no fall'; but you are away up on the heights, and may have
one, now and then."

This made me a little uncomfortable. I don't want any falls. I want
to go on to perfection.

OCT. 1.-Laura Cabot came to see me to-day, and seemed very
affectionate.

"I hope we may see more of each other than we have done," she began.
"My father wishes it, and so do I."

Katy, mentally.-"Ah! He sees how unworldly, how devoted I am, and so
wants Laura under my influence."

Katy, aloud.-"I am sure that is very kind."

Laura.-"Not at all. He knows it will be profitable to me to be with
you. I get a good deal discouraged at times, and want a friend to
strengthen and help me."

Katy, to herself.-"Yes, yes, he thinks me quite experienced and
trustworthy."

Katy, aloud.-"I shall never dare to try to help you."

Laura.-"Oh, yes, you must. I am so far behind you in Christian
experience."

But I am ashamed to write down any more. After she had gone I felt
delightfully puffed up for a while. But when I came up to my room
this evening, and knelt down to pray, everything looked dark and
chaotic. God seemed far away, and I took no pleasure in speaking to
Him. I felt sure that I had done something or felt something wrong,
and asked Him to show me what it was. There then flashed into my mind
the remembrance of the vain, conceited thoughts I had had during
Laura's visit and ever since.

How perfectly contemptible! I have had a fall indeed!

I think now my first mistake was in telling Dr. Cabot my secret,
sacred joys, as if some merit of mine had earned them for me. That
gave Satan a fine chance to triumph over me! After this I am
determined to maintain the utmost reserve in respect to my religious
experiences. Nothing is gained by running to tell them, and much is
lost.

I feel depressed and comfortless.



Chapter 9

IX.

OCT. 10.

WE have very sad news from Aunty. She says my Uncle is quite broken
down with some obscure disease that has been creeping stealthily
along for months. All his physicians agree that he must give up his
business and try the effect of a year's rest. Dr. Elliott proposes
his going to Europe, which seems to me about as formidable as going
to the next world. Aunty makes the best she can of it, but she says
the thought of being separated from Uncle a whole year is dreadful. I
pray for her day and night, that this wild project may be given up.
Why, he would be on the ocean ever so many weeks, exposed to all the
discomforts of narrow quarters and poor food, and that just as winter
is drawing nigh!

OCT. 12.-Aunty writes that the voyage to Europe has been decided on,
and that Dr. Elliott is to accompany Uncle, travel with him, amuse
him, and bring him home a well man. I hope Dr. E.'s power to amuse
may exist somewhere, but must own it was in a most latent form when I
had the pleasure of knowing him. Poor Aunty! How much better it would
be for her to go with Uncle! There are the children, to be sure.
Well, I hope Uncle may be the better for this great undertaking, but
I don't like the idea of it.

OCT. 15.-Another letter from Aunty, and new plans! The Dr. is to stay
at home, Aunty is to go with Uncle, and we-mother and myself-are to
take possession of the house and children during their absence! In
other words, all this is to be if we say amen. Could anything be more
frightful? To refuse would be selfish and cruel. If we consent I
thrust myself under Dr. Elliott's very nose.

OCT. 16.-Mother is surprised that I can hesitate one instant. She
seems to have forgotten all about Dr. E. She says we can easily find
a family to take this house for a year, and that she is delighted to
do anything for Aunty that can be done.

Nov. 4.-Here we are, the whole thing settled. Uncle and Aunty started
a week ago, and we are monarchs of all we survey, and this is a great
deal. I am determined that mother shall not be worn out with these
children, although of course I could not manage them without her advice and
help. It is to be hoped they won't all have the measles in a body, or
anything of that sort; I am sure it would be annoying to Dr. E. to
come here now.

Nov. 25.-Of course the baby must go on teething if only to have the
doctor sent for to lance his gums. I told mother I was sure I could
not be present when this was being done, so, though she looked
surprised, and said people should accustom themselves to such things,
she volunteered to hold baby herself.

Nov. 26.-The baby was afraid of mother, not being used to her, so she
sent for me. As I entered the room she gave him to me with an apology
for doing so, since I shrank from witnessing the operation. What must
Dr. E. think I am made of if I can't bear to see a child's gums
lanced? However, it is my own fault that he thinks me such a coward,
for I made mother think me one. It was very embarrassing to hold baby
and have the doctor's face so close to mine. I really wonder mother
should not see how awkwardly I am situated here.

Nov. 27.-We have a good many visitors, friends of Uncle and Aunty.
How uninteresting most people are! They all say the same thing,
namely, how strange that Aunty had courage to undertake such a
voyage, and to leave her children, etc., etc., etc., and what was Dr.
Elliott thinking of to let them go, etc, etc., etc.

Dr. Embury called to-day, with a pretty little fresh creature, his
new wife, who hangs on his arm like a work-bag. He is Dr. Elliott's
intimate friend, and spoke of him very warmly, and so did his wife,
who says she has known him always, as they were born and brought up
in the same village. I wonder he did not marry her himself, instead
of leaving her for Dr. Embury!

She says he, Dr. Elliott, I mean, was the most devoted son she ever
saw, and that he deserves his present success because he has made
such sacrifices for his parents. I never met any one whom I liked so
well on so short acquaintance--I mean Mrs. Embury, though you might
fancy, you poor deluded journal you, that I meant somebody else.

Nov. 30.-I have so much to do that I have little time for writing.
The way the children wear out their shoes and stockings, the speed
with which their hair grows, the way they bump their heads and pinch
their fingers, and the insatiable demand for stories, is something
next to miraculous. Not a day passes that somebody doesn't need
something bought; that somebody else doesn't choke itself, and that I
don't have to tell stories till I feel my intellect reduced to the
size of a pea. If ever I was alive and wide awake, however, it is
just now, and in spite of some vague shadows of, I don't know what, I
am very happy indeed. So is dear mother. She and the doctor have
become bosom friends. He keeps her making beef-tea, scraping lint, and
boiling calves feet for jelly, till the house smells like an
hospital.

I suppose he thinks me a poor, selfish, frivolous girl, whom nothing
would tempt to raise a finger for his invalids. But, of course, I do
not care what he thinks.

Dec. 4.-Dr. Elliott came this morning to ask mother to go with him to
see a child who had met with a horrible accident. She turned pale,
and pressed her lips together, but went at once to get ready. Then my
long-suppressed wrath burst out.

"How can you ask poor mother to go and see such sights?" I cried.
"You must think her nothing but a stone, if you suppose that after
the way in which my father died-"

"It was indeed most thoughtless in me," he interrupted; "but your
mother is such a rare woman, so decided and self-controlled, yet so
gentle, so full of tender sympathy, that I hardly know where to look
for just the help I need to-day. If you could see this poor child,
even you would justify me."

"Even you!" you monster of selfishness, heart of stone, floating
bubble, "even you would justify it!"

How cruel, how unjust, how unforgiving he is!

I rushed out of the room, and cried until I was tired.

DEC. 6.-Mother says she feels really grateful to Dr. E. for taking
her to see that child, and to help soothe and comfort it while he
went through with a severe, painful operation which she would not
describe, because she fancied I looked pale. I said I should think
the child's mother the most proper person to soothe it on such an
occasion.

"The poor thing has no mother," she said, reproachfully. "What has
got into you, Kate? You do not seem at all like yourself."

"I should think you had enough to do with this great house to keep in
order, so many mouths to fill, and so many servants to oversee,
without wearing yourself out with nursing all Dr. Elliott's poor
folks," I said, gloomily.

"The more I have to do the happier I am," she replied. "Dear Katy,
the old wound isn't healed yet, and I like to be with those who have
wounds and bruises of their own. And Dr. Elliott seems to have
divined this by instinct."

I ran and kissed her dear, pale face, which grows more beautiful
every day. No wonder she misses father so! He loved and honored her
beyond description, and never forgot one of those little courtesies
which must have a great deal to do with a wife's happiness. People
said of him that he was a gentleman of the old school, and that race
is dying out.

I feel a good deal out of sorts myself. Oh, I do so wish to get above
myself and all my childish, petty ways, and to live in a region where
there is no temptation and no sin!

DEC. 22.-I have been to see Mrs. Embury to-day. She did not receive
me as cordially as usual, and I very soon resolved to come away. She
detained me, however.

"Would you mind my speaking to you on a certain subject?" she asked,
with some embarrassment.

I felt myself flush up.

"I do not want to meddle with affairs that don't concern me," she
went on, "but Dr. Elliott and I have been intimate friends all our
lives. And his disappointment has really distressed me."

One of my moods came on, and I couldn't speak a word.

"You are not at all the sort of a girl I supposed he would fancy,"
she continued. "He always has said he was waiting to find some one
just like his mother, and she is one of the gentlest, meekest,
sweetest, and fairest among women."

"You ought to rejoice then that he has escaped the snare," I said, in
a husky voice, "and is free to marry his ideal, when he finds her."

"But that is just what troubles me. He is not free. He does not
attach himself readily, and I am afraid that it will be a long, long
time before he gets over this unlucky passion for you."

"Passion!" I cried, contemptuously.

She looked at me with some surprise, and then went on.

"Most girls would jump at the chance of getting such a husband."

"I don't know that I particularly care to be classed with 'most
girls,'" I replied, loftily.

"But if you only knew him as well as I do. He is so noble, so
disinterested, and is so beloved by his patients. I could tell you
scores of anecdotes about him that would show just what he is."

"Thank you," I said, "I think we have discussed Dr. Elliott quite
enough already. I cannot say that he has elevated himself in my
opinion by making you take up the cudgels in his defence."

"You do him injustice, when you say that," she cried. "His sister,
the only person to whom he confided the state of things, begged me to
find out, if I could, whether you had any other attachment, and if
her brother's case was quite hopeless. But I am sorry I undertook the
task as it has annoyed you so much."

I came away a good deal ruffled. When I got home mother said she was
glad I had been out at last for a little recreation, and that she
wished I did not confine myself so to the children. I said that I did
not confine myself more than Aunty did.

"But that is different," mother objected. "She is their own mother,
and love helps her to bear her burden."

"So it does me," I returned. "I love the children exactly as if they
were my own."

"That," she said, "is impossible."

"I certainly do," I persisted.

Mother would not dispute with me, though I wished she would.

"A mother," she went on, "receives her children one at a time, and
gradually adjusts herself to gradually increasing burdens. But you
take a whole houseful upon you at once, and I am sure it is too much
for you. You do not look or act like yourself."

"It isn't the children," I said.

"What is it, then?"

"Why, it's nothing," I said, pettishly.

"I must say, dear," said mother, not noticing my manner, "that your
wonderful devotion to the children, aside from its effect on your
health and temper, has given me great delight."

"I don't see why," I said.

"Very few girls of your age would give up their whole time as you do
to such work."

"That is because very few girls are as fond of children as I am.
There is no virtue in doing exactly what one likes best to do."

"There, go away, you contrary child," said mother, laughing. "If you
won't be praised, you won't."

So I came up here and moped a little. I don't see what ails me.

But there is an under-current of peace that is not entirely disturbed
by any outside event. In spite of my follies and my shortcomings, I
do believe that God loves and pities me, and will yet perfect that
which concerneth me. It is a great mystery. But so is everything.

Dr. Elliott to Mrs. Crofton:

And now, my dear friend, having issued my usual bulletin of health,
you may feel quite at ease about your dear children, and I come to a
point in your letter which I would gladly pass over in silence. But
this would be but a poor return for the interest you express in my
affairs.

Both ladies are devoted to your little flock, and Miss Mortimer seems
not to have a thought but for them. The high opinion I formed of her
at the outset is more than justified by all I see of her daily,
household life. I know what her faults are, for she seems to take
delight in revealing them. But I also know her rare virtues, and what
a wealth of affection she has to bestow on the man who is so happy as
to win her heart. But I shall never be that man. Her growing aversion
to me makes me dread a summons to your house, and I have hardly
manliness enough to conceal the pain this gives me. I entreat you,
therefore, never again to press this subject upon me. After all, I
would not, if I could, dispense with the ministry of disappointment
and unrest.

Mrs. Crofton, in reply:

. . . . So she hates you, does she? I am charmed to hear it.
Indifference would be an alarming symptom, but good, cordial hatred,
or what looks like it, is a most hopeful sign. The next chance you
get to see her alone, assure her that you never shall repeat your
first offence. If nothing comes of it I am not a woman, and never was
one; nor is she.

MARCH 25, 1836.-The New Year and my birthday have come and gone, and
this is the first moment I could find for writing down all that has
happened.

The day after my last date I was full of serious, earnest thoughts,
of new desires to live, without one reserve, for God. I was smarting
under the remembrance of my folly at Mrs. Embury's, and with a sense
of vague disappointment and discomfort, and had to fly closer than
ever to Him. In the evening I thought I would go to the usual weekly
service. It is true I don't like prayer-meetings, and that is a bad
sign, I am afraid. But I am determined to go where good people go,
and see if I can't learn to like what they like.

Mother went with me, of course.

What was my surprise to find that Dr. E. was to preside! I had no
idea that he was that sort of a man.

The hymns they sang were beautiful, and did me good. So was his
prayer. If all prayers were like that, I am sure I should like
evening meetings as much as I now dislike them. He so evidently spoke
to God in it, and as if he were used to such speaking.

He then made a little address on the ministry of disappointments, as
he called it. He spoke so cheerfully and hopefully that I began to
see almost for the first time God's reason for the petty trials and
crosses that help to make up every day of one's life. He said there
were few who were not constantly disappointed with themselves, with
their slow progress, their childishness and weakness; disappointed
with their friends who, strangely enough, were never quite perfect
enough, and disappointed with the world, which was always promising
so much and giving so little. Then he urged to a wise and patient
consent to this discipline, which, if rightly used, would help to
temper and strengthen the soul against the day of sorrow and
bereavement. But I am not doing him justice in this meagre report;
there was something almost heavenly in his expression which words
cannot describe.

Coming out I heard some one ask, "Who was that young clergyman?" and
the answer, "Oh, that is only a doctor!"

Well! the next week I went again, with mother. We had hardly taken
our seats when Dr. E. marched in with the sweetest looking little
creature I ever saw. He was so taken up with her that he did not
observe either mother or myself. As she sat by my side I could not
see her full face, but her profile was nearly perfect. Her eyes were
of that lovely blue one sees in violets and the skies, with long,
soft eye-lashes, and her complexion was as pure as a baby's. Yet she
was not one of your doll beauties; her face expressed both feeling
and character. They sang together from the same book, though I
offered her a share of mine. Of course, when people do that it can
mean but one thing.

So it seems he has forgotten me, and consoled himself with this
pretty little thing. No doubt she is like his mother, that "gentlest,
meekest, sweetest and fairest among women!"

Now if anybody should be sick, and he should come here, I thought,
what would become of me? I certainly could not help showing that a
love that can so soon take up with a new object could not have been a
sentiment of much depth.

It is not pleasant to lose even a portion of one's respect and esteem
for another.

The next day mother went to visit an old friend of hers, who has a
beautiful place outside of the city. The baby's nurse had ironing to
do, so I promised to sit in the nursery till it was finished. Lucy
came, with her books, to sit with me. She always follows like my
shadow. After a while Mrs. Embury called. I hesitated a little about
trusting the child to Lucy's care, for though her prim ways have
given her the reputation of being wise beyond her years, I observe
that she is apt to get into trouble which a quick-witted child would
either avoid or jump out of in a twinkling. However, children are
often left to much younger girls, so, with many cautions, I went
down, resolving to stay only a few moments.

But I wanted so much to know all about that pretty little friend of
Dr. E.'s that I let Mrs. Embury stay on and on, though not a ray of
light did I get for my pains. At last I heard Lucy's step coming
downstairs.

"Cousin Katy," she said, entering the room with her usual propriety,
"I was seated by the window, engaged with my studies, and the
children were playing about, as usual, when suddenly I heard a
shriek, and one of them ran past me, all in a blaze and-"

I believe I pushed her out of my way as I rushed upstairs, for I took
it for granted I should meet the little figure all in a blaze, coming
to meet me. But I found it wrapped in a blanket, the flames
extinguished. Meanwhile, Mrs. Embury had roused the whole house, and
everybody came running upstairs.

"Get the doctor, some of you," I cried, clasping the poor little
writhing form in my arms.

And then I looked to see which of them it was, and found it was
Aunty's pet lamb, everybody's pet lamb, our little loving, gentle
Emma.

Dr. Elliott must have come on wings, for I had not time to be
impatient for his arrival. He was as tender as a woman with Emma; we
cut off and tore off her clothes wherever the fire had touched her,
and he dressed the burns with his own hands. He did not speak a word
to me, or I to him. This time he did not find it necessary to advise
me to control myself. I was as cold and hard as a stone.

But when poor little Emma's piercing shrieks began to subside, and
she came a little under the influence of some soothing drops he had
given her at the outset, I began to feel that sensation in the back
of my neck that leads to conquest over the most stubborn and the most
heroic. I had just time to get Emma into the doctor's arms, and then
down I went. I got over it in a minute, and was up again before any
one had time to come to the rescue. But Dr. E. gave Emma to Mrs.
Embury, who had taken off her things and been crying all the time,
and said in a low voice,

"I beg you will now leave the room, and lie down. And do not feel
obliged to see me when I visit the child. That annoyance, at least,
you should spare yourself."

"No consideration shall make me neglect little Emma," I replied,
defiantly.

By this time Mrs. Embury had rocked her to sleep, and she lay, pale
and with an air of complete exhaustion, in her arms.

"You must lie down now, Miss Mortimer," Dr. Elliott said, as he rose
to go. "I will return in a few hours to see how you both do."

He stood looking at, Emma, but did not go. Then Mrs. Embury asked the
question I had not dared to ask.

"Is the poor child in danger?"

"I cannot say; I trust not. Miss Mortimer's presence of mind in
extinguishing the flames at once, has, I hope, saved its life."

"It was not my presence of mind, it was Lucy's!" I cried, eagerly.
Oh, how I envied her for being the heroine, and for the surprised,
delighted smile with which he went and took her hand, saying, "I
congratulate you, Lucy! How your mother will rejoice at this!"

I tried to think of nothing but poor little Emma, and of the reward
Aunty had had for her kindness to Lucy. But I thought of myself, and
how likely it was that under the same circumstances I should have
been beside myself, and done nothing. This, and many other emotions,
made me burst out crying.

"Yes, cry, cry, with all your heart," said Mrs. Embury, laying Emma
gently down, and coming to get me into her arms. "It will do you
good, poor child!"

She cried with me, till at last I could lie down and try to sleep.

Well, the days and the weeks were very long after that.

Dear mother had a hard time, what with her anxiety about Emma, and my
crossness and unreasonableness.

Dr. Elliott came and went, came and went. At last he said all danger
was over, and that our patient little darling would get well. But his
visits did not diminish; he came twice and three times every day.
Sometimes I hoped he would tell us about his new flame, and sometimes
I felt that I could not hear her mentioned. One day mother was so
unwell that I had to help him dress Emma's burns, and I could not
help saying:

"Even a mother's gentlest touch, full of love as it is, is almost
rough compared with that of one trained to such careful handling as
you are."

He looked gratified, but said:

"I am glad you begin to find that even stones feel, sometimes."

Another time something was said about the fickleness of women. Mrs.
Embury began it. I fired up, of course.

He seemed astonished at my attack.

"I said nothing," he declared.

"No, but you looked a good many things. Now the fact is, women are
not fickle. When they lose what they value most, they find it
impossible to replace it. But men console themselves with the first
good thing that comes along."

I dare say I spoke bitterly, for I was thinking how soon Ch----, I
mean somebody, replaced me in his shallow heart, and how, with equal
speed, Dr. Elliott had helped himself to a new love.

"I do not like these sweeping assertions," said Dr. Elliott, looking
a good deal annoyed.

"I have to say what I think," I persisted.

"It is well to think rightly, then," he said, gravely.

"By the bye, have you heard from Helen?" Mrs. Embury most
irreverently asked.

"Yes, I, heard yesterday."

"I suppose you will be writing her, then? Will you enclose a little
note from me? Or rather let me have the least corner of your sheet?"

I was shocked at her want of delicacy. Of course this Helen must be
the new love, and how could a woman with two grains of sense imagine
he would want to spare her a part of his sheet!

I felt tired and irritated. As soon as Dr. Elliott had gone, I began
to give her a good setting down.

"I could hardly believe my ears," I said, "when I heard you ask leave
to write on Dr. Elliott's sheet."

"No wonder," she said, laughing. "I suppose you never knew what it
was to have to count every shilling, and to deny yourself the
pleasure of writing to a friend because of what it would cost. I'm
sure I never did till I was married."

"But to ask him to let you help write his love-letters," I objected.

"Ah! is that the way the wind blows?" she cried, nodding her pretty
little head. "Well, then, let me relieve your mind, my dear, by
informing you that this 'love-letter' is to his sister, my dearest
friend, and the sweetest little thing you ever saw."

"Oh!" I said, and immediately felt quite rested, and quite like
myself.

Like myself! And who is she, pray!

Two souls dwell in my poor little body, and which of them is me, and
which of them isn't, it would be hard to tell. This is the way they
behave:

SCENE FIRST.

Katy, to the other creature, whom I will call Kate.-Your mother looks
tired, and you have been very cross. Run and put your arms around
her, and tell her how you love her.

Kate.-Oh, I can't; it would look queer. I don't like palaver.
Besides, who would not be cross who felt as I do?

SCENE SECOND.

Katy.-Little Emma has nothing to do, and ought to be amused. Tell her
a story, do.

Kate.-I am tired, and need to be amused myself.

Katy.-But the dear little thing is so patient and has suffered so
much.

Kate.-Well, I have suffered, too. If she had not climbed up on the
fender she would not have got burned.

SCENE THIRD.

Kate.-You are very irritable to-day. You had better go upstairs to
your room and pray for patience.

Katy.-One can't be always praying. I don't feel like it.

SCENE FOURTH.

Katy.-You treat Dr. Elliott shamefully. I should think he would
really avoid you as you avoid him.

Kate-Don't let me hear his name. I don't avoid him.

Katy.-You do not deserve his good opinion.

Kate.-Yes, I do.

SCENE FIFTH

Just awake in the morning.

Katy.-Oh, dear! how hateful I am! I am cross and selfish, and
domineering, and vain. I think of myself the whole time; I behave
like a heroine when Dr. Elliott is present, and like a naughty,
spoiled child when he is not. Poor mother! how can she endure me? As
to my piety, it is worse than none.

Kate, a few hours later.-Well, nobody can deny that I have a real
gift in managing children! And I am very lovable, or mother wouldn't
be so fond of me. I am always pleasant unless I am sick, or worried,
and my temper is not half so hasty as it used to be. I never think of
myself, but am all the time doing something for others. As to Dr. E.,
I am thankful to say that I have never stooped to attract him by
putting on airs and graces. He sees me just as I am. And I am very
devout. I love to read good books and to be with good people. I pray
a great deal. The bare thought of doing wrong makes me shudder.
Mother is proud of me, and I don't wonder. Very few girls would have
behaved as I did when Emma was burned. Perhaps I am not as sweet as
some people. I am glad of it. I hate sweet people. I have great
strength of character, which is much better, and am certainly very
high-toned.

But, my poor journal, you can't stand any more such stuff, can you?
But tell me one thing, am I Katy or am I Kate?



Chapter 10

X

APRIL 20.

YESTERDAY I felt better than I have done since the accident. I ran
about the house quite cheerily, for me. I wanted to see mother for
something, and flew singing into the parlor, where I had left her
shortly before. But she was not there, and Dr. Elliott was. I started
back, and was about to leave the room, but he detained me.

"Come in, I beg of you," he said, his voice grow mg hoarser and
hoarser. "Let us put a stop to this."

"To what?" I asked, going nearer and nearer, and looking up into his
face, which was quite pale.

"To your evident terror of being alone with me, of hearing me speak.
Let me assure you, once for all, that nothing would tempt me to annoy
you by urging myself upon you, as you seem to fear I may be tempted
to do. I cannot force you to love me, nor would I if I could. If you
ever want a friend you will find one in me. But do not think of me as
your lover, or treat me as if I were always lying in wait for a
chance to remind you of it. That I shall never do, never."

"Oh, no, of course not!" I broke forth, my face all in a glow, and
tears of mortification raining down my cheeks. "I knew you did not
care for me I! knew you had got over it!"

I don't know which of us began it, I don't think he did, and I am
sure I did not, but the next moment I was folded all up in his great
long arms, and a new life had begun!

Mother opened the door not long after, and seeing what was going on,
trotted away on her dear feet as fast as she could.

APRIL 21.-I am too happy to write journals. To think how we love each
other.

Mother behaves beautifully.

APRIL 25.-One does not feel like saying much about it, when one is as
happy as I am. I walk the streets as one treading on air. I fly about
the house as on wings. I kiss everybody I see.

Now that I look at Ernest (for he makes me call him so) with
unprejudiced eyes, I wonder I ever thought him clumsy. And how
ridiculous it was in me to confound his dignity and manliness with
age!

It is very odd, however, that such a cautious, well-balanced man
should have fallen in love with me that day at Sunday-school. And
still stranger that with my headlong, impulsive nature, I
deliberately walked into love with him!

I believe we shall never get through with what we have to say to each
other. I am afraid we are rather selfish to leave mother to herself
every evening.

SEPT. 5.-This has been a delightful summer. To be sure, we had to
take the children to the country for a couple of months, but Ernest's
letters are almost better than Ernest himself. I have written enough
to him to fill a dozen books. We are going back to the city now. In
his last letter Ernest says he has been home, and that his mother is
delighted to hear of his engagement. He says, too, that he went to
see an old lady, one of the friends of his boyhood, to tell the news
to her.

"When I told her," he goes on, "that I had found the most beautiful,
the noblest, the most loving of human beings, she only said, 'Of
course, of course!'

"Now you know, dear, that it is not at all of course, but the very
strangest, most wonderful event in the history of the world."

And then he described a scene he had just witnessed at the deathbed
of a young girl of my own age, who left this world and every possible
earthly joy, with a delight in the going to be with Christ, that made
him really eloquent. Oh, how glad I am that God has cast in my lot
with a man whose whole business is to minister to others! I am sure
this will, of itself, keep him unworldly and unselfish. How delicious
it is to love such a character, and how happy I shall be to go with
him to sick-rooms and to dying-beds! He has already taught me that
lessons learned in such scenes far outweigh in value what books and
sermons, even, can teach.

And now, my dear old journal, let me tell you a secret that has to do
with life, and not with death.

I am going to be married!

To think that I am always to be with Ernest! To sit at the table with
him every day, to pray with him, to go to church with him, to have
him all mine! I am sure that there is not another man on earth whom I
could love as I love him. The thought of marrying Ch---, I mean of
having that silly, school-girl engagement end in marriage, was always
repugnant to me. But I give myself to Ernest joyfully and with all my
heart.

How good God has been to me! I do hope and pray that this new, this
absorbing love, has not detached my soul from Him, will not detach
it. If I knew it would, could I, should I have courage to cut it off
and cast it from me?

JAN. 16, 1837.-Yesterday was my birthday, and to-day is my
wedding-day. We meant to celebrate the one with the other, but Sunday
would come this year on the fifteenth.

I am dressed, and have turned everybody out of this room, where I
have suffered so much mortification, and experienced so much joy,
that before I give myself to Ernest, and before I leave home forever,
I may once more give myself away to God. I have been too much
absorbed in my earthly love, and am shocked to find how it fills my
thoughts. But I will belong to God. I will begin my married life in
His fear, depending on Him to make me an unselfish, devoted wife.

JAN. 25.-We had a delightful trip after the wedding was over. Ernest
proposed to take me to his own home that I might see his mother and
sister. He never has said that he wanted them to see me. But his
mother is not well. I am heartily glad of it.

I mean I was glad to escape going there to be examined and
criticised. Every one of them would pick at me, I am sure, and I
don't like to be picked at.

We have a home of our own, and I am trying to take kindly to
housekeeping. Ernest is away a great deal more than I expected he
would be. I am fearfully lonely. Aunty comes to see me as often as
she can, and I go there almost every day, but that doesn't amount to
much. As soon as I can venture to it, I shall ask Ernest to let me
invite mother to come and live with us. It is not right for her to be
left all alone so I hoped he would do that himself. But men are not
like women. We think of everything.

FEB. 15.-Our honeymoon ends to-day. There hasn't been quite as much
honey in it as I expected. I supposed that Ernest would be at home
every evening, at least, and that he would read aloud, and have me
play and sing, and that we should have delightful times together. But
now he has got me he seems satisfied, and goes about his business as
if he had been married a hundred years. In the morning he goes off to
see his list of patients; he is going in and out all day; after
dinner we sit down to have a nice talk together; the door-bell
invariably rings, and he is called away. Then in the evening he goes
and sits in his office and studies; I don't mean every minute, but he
certainly spends hours there. To-day he brought me such a precious
letter from dear mother! I could not help crying when I read it, it
was so kind and so loving. Ernest looked amazed; he threw down his
paper, came and took me in his arms and asked, "What is the matter,
darling?" Then it all came out. I said I was lonely, and hadn't been
used to spending my evenings all by myself.

"You must get some of your friends to come and see you, poor child,"
he said.

"I don't want friends," I sobbed out. "I want you."

"Yes, darling; why didn't you tell me so sooner? Of course I will
stay with you if you wish it."

"If that is your only reason, I am sure I don't want you," I pouted.

He looked puzzled.

"I really don't know what to do," he said, with a most comical look
of perplexity. But he went to his office, and brought up a pile of
fusty old books.

"Now, dear," he said, "we understand each other I think. I can read
here just as well as down stairs. Get your book and we shall be as
cosy as possible."

My heart felt sore and dissatisfied. Am I unreasonable and childish?
What is married life? An occasional meeting, a kiss here and a caress
there? or is it the sacred union of the twain who 'walk together side
by side, knowing each other's joys and sorrows, and going Heavenward
hand in hand?

FEB. 17.-Mrs. Embury has been here to-day. I longed to compare notes
with her, and find out whether it really is my fault that I am not
quite happy. But I could not bear to open my heart to her on so
sacred a subject. We had some general conversation, however, which
did me good for the time, at least.

She said she thought one of the first lessons a wife should learn is
self-forgetfulness. I wondered if she had seen anything in me to call
forth this remark. We meet pretty often; partly because our husbands
are such good friends, partly because she is as fond of music as I
am, and we like to sing and play together, and I never see her that
she does not do or say something elevating; something that
strengthens my own best purposes and desires. But she knows nothing
of my conflict and dismay, and never will. Her gentle nature responds
at once to holy influences. I feel truly grateful to her for loving
me, for she really does love me, and yet she must see my faults.

I should like to know if there is any reason on earth why a woman
should learn self-forgetfulness that does not apply to a man?

FEB. 18.-Uncle says he has no doubt he owes his life to Ernest, who,
in the face of opposition to other physicians, insisted on his giving
up his business and going off to Europe at just the right moment. For
his partner, whose symptoms were very like his own, has been stricken
down with paralysis, and will not recover.

It is very pleasant to hear Ernest praised, and it is a pleasure I
have very often, for his friends come to see me, and speak of him
with rapture. A lady told me that through the long illness of a sweet
young daughter of hers, he prayed with her every day, ministering so
skillfully to her soul, that all fear of death was taken away, and
she just longed to go, and did go at last, with perfect delight. I
think he spoke of her to me once; but he did not tell me that her
preparations for death was his work. I could not conceive of him as
doing that.

FEB. 24.-Ernest has been gone a week. His mother is worse and he had
to go. I wanted to go too, but he said it was not worth while, as he
should have to return directly. Dr. Embury takes charge of his
patients during his absence, and Mrs. E. and Aunty and the children
come to see me very often. I like Mrs. Embury more and more. She is
not so audacious as I am, but I believe she agrees with me more than
she will own.

FEB. 25.-Ernest writes that his mother is dangerously ill, and seems
in great distress. I am mean enough to want all his love myself,
while I should hate him if he gave none to her. Poor Ernest! If she
should die he would be sadly afflicted!

FEB. 27.-She died the very day he wrote. How I long to fly to him and
to comfort him! I can think of nothing else. I pray day and night
that God would make me a better wife.

A letter came from mother at the same time with Ernest's. She
evidently misses me more than she will own. Just as soon as Ernest
returns home I will ask him to let her come and live with us. I am
sure he will; he loves her already, and now that his mother has gone
he will find her a real comfort. I am sure she will only make our
home the happier.

FEB. 28.-Such a dreadful thing is going to happen! I have cried and
called myself names by turns all day. Ernest writes that it has been
decided to give up the old homestead, and scatter the family about
among the married sons and daughters. Our share is to be his father
and his sister Martha, and he desires me to have two rooms got ready
for them at once.

So all the glory and the beauty is snatched out of my married life at
one swoop! And it is done by the hand I love best, and that I would
not have believed could be so unkind.

I am rent in pieces by conflicting emotions and passions. One moment
I am all tenderness and sympathy for poor Ernest, and ready to
sacrifice everything for his pleasure. The next I am bitterly angry
with him for disposing of all my happiness in this arbitrary way. If
he had let me make common cause with him and share his interests with
him, I know I am not so abominably selfish as to feel as I do now.
But he forces two perfect strangers upon me and forever shuts our
doors against my darling mother. For, of course, she cannot live with
us if they do.

And who knows what sort of people they are? It is not everybody I can
get along with, nor is it everybody can get along with me. Now, if
Helen were coming instead of Martha, that would be some relief. I
could love her, I am sure, and she would put up with my ways. But
your Marthas I am afraid of. Oh, dear, dear, what a nest of scorpions
this affair has stirred up within me! Who would believe I could be
thinking of my own misery while Ernest's mother, whom he loved so
dearly, is hardly in her grave! But I have no heart, I am stony and
cold. It is well to have found out just what I am!

Since I wrote that I have been trying to tell God all about it. But I
could not speak for crying. And I have been getting the rooms ready.
How many little things I had planned to put in the best one, which I
intended for mother I have made myself arrange them just the same for
Ernest's father. The stuffed chair I have had in my room, and enjoyed
so much, has been rolled in, and the Bible with large print placed on
the little table near which I had pictured mother with her sweet,
pale face, as sitting year after year. The only thing I have taken
away is the copy of father's portrait. He won't want that!

When I had finished this business I went and shook my fist at the
creature I saw in the glass.

"You're beaten!" I cried. "You didn't want to give up the chair, nor
your writing-table, nor the Bible in which you expect to record the
names of your ten children I But you've had to do it, so there!"

MARCH 3.-They all got here at 7 o'clock last night, just in time for
tea. I was so glad to get hold of Ernest once more that I was
gracious to my guests, too. The very first thing, however, Ernest
annoyed me by calling me Katherine, though he knows I hate that name,
and want to be called Katy as if I were a lovable person, as I
certainly am (sometimes). Of course his father and Martha called me
Katherine, too.

His father is even taller, darker, blacker eyed, blacker haired than
he.

Martha is a spinster.

I had got up a nice little supper for them, thinking they would need
something substantial after their journey. And perhaps there was some
vanity in the display of dainties that needed the mortification I
felt at seeing my guests both push away their plates in apparent
disgust. Ernest, too, looked annoyed, and expressed some regret that
they could find nothing to tempt their appetites.

Martha said something about not expecting much from young
housekeepers, which I inwardly resented, for the light, delicious
bread had been sent by Aunty, together with other luxuries from her
own table, and I knew they were not the handiwork of a young
housekeeper, but of old Chloe, who had lived in her own and her
mother's family twenty years.

Ernest went out as soon as this unlucky repast was over to hear Dr.
Embury's report of his patients, and we passed a dreary evening, as
my mind was preoccupied with longing for his return. The more I tried
to think of something to say the more I couldn't.

At last Martha asked at what time we breakfasted.

"At half-past seven, precisely," I answered. "Ernest is very punctual
about breakfast. The other meals are more irregular."

"That is very late," she returned. "Father rises early and needs his
breakfast at once."

I said I would see that he had it as early as he liked, while I
foresaw that this would cost me a battle with the divinity who
reigned in the kitchen.

"You need not trouble yourself. I will speak to my brother about it,"
she said.

"Ernest has nothing to do with it," I said, quickly.

She looked at me in a speechless way, and then there was a long
silence, during which she shook her head a number of times. At last
she inquired: "Did you make the bread we had on the table to-night?"

"No, I do not know how to make bread," I said, smiling at her look of
horror.

"Not know how to make bread?" she cried. The very spirit of mischief
got into me, and made me ask:

"Why, can you?"

Now I know there is but one other question I could have asked her,
less insulting than this, and that is:

"Do you know the Ten Commandments?"

A spinster fresh from a farm not know how make bread, to be sure!

But in a moment I was ashamed and sorry that I had yielded to myself
so far as to forget the courtesy due to her as my guest, and one just
home from a scene of sorrow, so I rushed across the room, seized her
hand, and said, eagerly:

"Do forgive me! It slipped out before I thought!"

She looked at me in blank amazement, unconscious that there was
anything to forgive.

"How you startled me!" she said. "I thought you had suddenly gone
crazy."

I went back to my seat crestfallen enough. All this time Ernest's
father had sat grim and grave in his corner, without a word. But now
he spoke.

"At what hour does my son have family worship? I should like to
retire. I feel very weary."

Now family worship at night consists in our kneeling down together
hand in hand, the last thing before going to bed, and in our own
room. The awful thought of changing this sweet, informal habit into a
formal one made me reply quickly:

"Oh, Ernest is very irregular about it. He is often out in the
evening, and sometimes we are quite late. I hope you never will feel
obliged to wait for him."

"I trust I shall do my duty, whatever it costs," was the answer.

Oh, how I wished they would go to bed!

It was now ten o'clock, and I felt tired and restless. When Ernest is
out late I usually lie on the sofa and wait for him, and so am bright
and fresh when he comes in. But now I had to sit up, and there was no
knowing for how long. I poked at the fire and knocked down the shovel
and tongs, now I leaned back in my chair, and now I leaned forward,
and then I listened for his step. At last he came.

"What, are you not all gone to bed?" he asked.

As if I could go to bed when I had scarcely seen him a moment since
his return!

I explained why we waited, and then we had prayer and escorted our
guests to their rooms. When we got back to the parlor I was thankful
to rest my tired soul in Ernest's arms, and to hear what little he
had to tell about his mother's last hours.

"You must love me more than ever, now," he said, "for I have lost my
best friend."

"Yes," I said, "I will." As if that were possible! All the time we
were talking I heard the greatest racket overhead, but he did not
seem to notice it. I found, this morning, that Martha, or her father,
or both together, had changed the positions of article of furniture
in the room making it look a fright.



Chapter 11

XI.

MARCH 10.

THINGS are even worse than I expected. Ernest evidently looked at me
with his father's eyes (and this father has got the jaundice, or
something), and certainly is cooler towards me than he was before he
went home. Martha still declines eating more than enough to keep body
and soul together, and sits at the table with the air of a martyr.
Her father lives on crackers and stewed prunes, and when he has eaten
them, fixes his melancholy eyes on me, watching every mouthful with
an air of plaintive regret that I will consume so much unwholesome
food.

Then Ernest positively spends less time with me than ever, and sits
in his office reading and writing nearly every evening.

Yesterday I came home from an exhilarating walk, and a charming call
at Aunty's, and at the dinner-table gave a lively account of some of
the children's exploits. Nobody laughed, and nobody made any
response, and after dinner Ernest took me aside, and said, kindly
enough, but still said it,

"My little wife must be careful how she runs on in my father's
presence. He has a great deal of every thing that might be thought
levity."

Then all the vials of my wrath exploded and went off.

"Yes, I see how it is," I cried, passionately. "You and your father
and your sister have got a box about a foot square that you want to
squeeze me into. I have seen it ever since they came. And I can tell
you it will take more than three of you to do it. There was no harm
in what I said-none, whatever. If you only married me for the sake of
screwing me down and freezing me up, why didn't you tell me so before
it was too late?"

Ernest stood looking at me like one staring at a problem he had got
to solve, and didn't know where to begin.

"I am very sorry," he said. "I thought you would be glad to have me
give you this little hint. Of course I want you to appear your very
best before my father and sister."

"My very best is my real self," I cried. "To talk like a woman of
forty is unnatural to a girl of my age. If your father doesn't like
me I wish he would go away, and not come here putting notions into
your head, and making you as cold and hard as a stone. Mother liked
to have me 'run on,' as you call it, and I wish I had stayed with her
all my life."

"Do you mean," he asked, very gravely, "that you really wish that?"

"No," I said, "I don't mean it," for his husky, troubled voice
brought me to my senses. "All I mean is, that I love you so dearly,
and you keep my heart feeling so hungry and restless; and then you
went and brought your father and sister here and never asked me if I
should like it; and you crowded mother out, and she lives all alone,
and it isn't right! I always said that whoever married me had got to
marry mother, and I never dreamed that you would disappoint me so!"

"Will you stop crying, and listen to me?" he said.

But I could not stop. The floods of the great deep were broken up at
last, and I had to cry. If I could have told my troubles to some one
I could thus have found vent for them, but there was no one to whom I
had a right to speak of my husband.

Ernest walked up and down in silence. Oh, if I could have cried on
his breast, and felt that he loved and pitied me!

At last, as I grew quieter, he came and sat by me.

"This has come upon me like a thunderclap," he said. "I did not know
I kept your heart hungry. I did not know you wished your mother to
live with us. And I took it for granted that my wife, with her
high-toned, heroic character, would sustain me in every duty, and
welcome my father and sister to our home. I do not know what I can do
now. Shall I send them away?"

"No, no!" I cried. "Only be good to me, Ernest, only love me, only
look at me with your own eyes, and not with other people's. You knew
I had faults when you married me; I never tried to conceal them."

"And did you fancy I had none myself?" he asked.

"No," I replied. "I saw no faults in you. Everybody said you were
such a noble, good man and you spoke so beautifully one night at an
evening meeting."

"Speaking beautifully is little to the purpose less one lives
beautifully," he said, sadly. "And now is it possible that you and I,
a Christian man and a Christian woman, are going on and on with
scenes as this? Are you to wear your very life out because I have not
your frantic way of loving, and am I to be made weary of mine because
I cannot satisfy you?"

"But, Ernest," I said, "you used to satisfy me. Oh, how happy I was
in those first days when we were always together; and you seemed so
fond me!" I was down on the floor by this time, and looking up into
his pale, anxious face.

"Dear child," he said, "I do love you, and that more than you know.
But you would not have me leave my work and spend my whole time
telling you so?"

"You know I am not so silly," I cried.. "It is not fair, it is not
right to talk as if I were. I ask for nothing unreasonable. I only
want those little daily assurances of your affection which I should
suppose would be spontaneous if you felt at all towards me as I do to
you."

"The fact is," he returned, "I am absorbed in my work. It brings many
grave cares and anxieties. I spend most of my time amid scenes of
suffering and at dying beds. This makes me seem abstracted and cold,
but it does not make you less dear. On the contrary, the sense it
gives me of the brevity and sorrowfulness of life makes you doubly
precious, since it constantly reminds me that sick beds and dying
beds must sooner or later come to our home as to those of others."

I clung to him as he uttered these terrible words. In an agony of
terror.

"Oh, Ernest, promise me, promise me that you will not die first," I
pleaded.

"Foolish little thing!" he said, and was as silly, for a while, as the
silliest heart could ask. Then he became serious again.

"Katy," he said, "if you can once make up your mind to the fact that
I am an undemonstrative man, not all fire and fury and ecstasy as you
are, yet loving you with all my heart, however it may seem, I think
you will spare yourself much needless pain--and spare me, also."

"But I want, you to be demonstrative," I persisted.

"Then you must teach me. And about my father and sister, perhaps, we
may find some way of relieving you by and by. Meanwhile, try to bear
with the trouble they make, for my sake."

"But I don't mind the trouble! Oh, Ernest, how you do misunderstand
me! What I mind is their coming between you and me and making you
love me less."

By this time there was a call for Ernest-it is a wonder there had
not been forty-and he went.

"I feel as heart-sore as ever. What has been gained by this tempest?
Nothing at all! Poor Ernest! How can I worry him so when he is
already full of care?"

MARCH 20.-I have had such a truly beautiful letter to-day from dear
mother! She gives up the hope of coming to spend her last years with
us with a sweet patience that makes me cry whenever I think of it.
What is the secret of this instant and cheerful consent to whatever
God wills! Oh, that I had it, too! She begs me to be considerate
and kind to Ernest's father and sister, and constantly to remind
myself that my Heavenly Father has chosen to give me this care and
trial on the very threshold of my married life. I am afraid I have
quite lost sight of that in my indignation with Ernest for bringing
them here.

APRIL 3.-Martha is closeted with Ernest in his office day and night.
They never give me the least hint of what is going on in these secret
meetings. Then this morning Sarah, my good, faithful cook, bounced
into my room to give warning. She said she could not live where there
were two mistresses giving contrary directions.

"But, really, there is but one mistress," I urged. Then it came out
that Martha went down every morning to look after the soap-fat, and
to scrimp in the house-keeping, and see that there was no food
wasted. I remembered then that she had inquired whether I attended to
these details, evidently ranking s

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