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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Stepping Heavenward, by Mrs. E. Prentiss
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license
+
+
+Title: Stepping Heavenward
+
+Author: Mrs. E. Prentiss
+
+Release Date: February, 2001  [Etext #2515]
+[Last updated: March 26, 2017]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS 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 such duties with saying one's
+prayers and reading one's Bible.
+
+I flew to Ernest the moment he was at leisure and poured my
+grievances into his ear.
+
+"Well, dear," he said, "suppose you give up the house-keeping to
+Martha! She will be far happier and you will be freed from much
+annoying, petty care."
+
+I bit my tongue lest it should say something, and went back to Sarah.
+
+"Suppose Miss Elliott takes charge of the housekeeping, and I have
+nothing to do with it, will you stay?"
+
+"Indeed, and I won't then. I can't bear her, and I won't put up with
+her nasty, scrimping, pinching ways!"
+
+"Very well. Then you will have to go," I said, with great dignity,
+though just ready to cry. Ernest, on being applied to for wages,
+undertook to argue the question himself.
+
+"My sister will take the whole charge," he began.
+
+"And may and welcome for all me!" quoth Sarah. "I don't like her and
+never shall."
+
+"Your liking or disliking her is of no consequence whatever," said
+Ernest. "You may dislike her as much as you please. But you must not
+leave us."
+
+"Indeed, and I'm not going to stay and be put upon by her," persisted
+Sarah. So she has gone. We had to get dinner ourselves; that is to
+say, Martha did, for she said I got in her way, and put her out with
+my awkwardness. I have been running hither and thither to find some
+angel who will consent to live in this ill-assorted household. Oh,
+how different everything is from what I had planned! I wanted a
+cheerful home, where I should be the centre of every joy; a home like
+Aunty's, without a cloud. But Ernest's father sits, the
+personification of silent gloom, like a nightmare on my spirits;
+Martha holds me in disfavor and contempt; Ernest is absorbed in his
+profession, and I hardly see him. If he wants advice he asks it of
+Martha, while I sit, humbled, degraded and ashamed, wondering why he
+ever married me at all. And then come interludes of wild joy when he
+appears just as he did in the happy days of our bridal trip, and I
+forget every grievance and hang on his words and looks like one
+intoxicated with bliss.
+
+OCT. 2.-There has been another explosion. I held in as long as I
+could, and then flew into ten thousand pieces. Ernest had got into
+the habit of helping his father and sister at the table, and
+apparently forgetting me. It seems a little thing, but it chafed and
+fretted my already irritated soul till at last I was almost beside
+myself.
+
+Yesterday they all three sat eating their breakfast and I, with empty
+plate, sat boiling over and, looking on, when Ernest brought things
+to a crisis by saying to Martha,
+
+"If you can find time to-day I wish you would go out with me for half
+an hour or so. I want to consult you about-"
+
+"Oh!" I said, rising, with my face all in a flame, "do not trouble
+yourself to go out in order to escape me. I can leave the room and
+you can have your secrets to yourselves as you do your breakfast!"
+
+I don't know which struck me, most, Ernest's appalled, grieved look
+or the glance exchanged between Martha and her father.
+
+He did not hinder my leaving the room, and I went upstairs, as
+pitiable an object as could be seen. I heard him go to his office,
+then take his hat and set forth on his rounds. What wretched hours I
+passed, thus left alone! One moment I reproached myself, the next I
+was indignant at the long series of offences that had led to this
+disgraceful scene.
+
+At last Ernest came.
+
+He looked concerned, and a little pale.
+
+"Oh, Ernest!" I cried, running to him, "I am so sorry I spoke to you
+as I did! But, indeed, I cannot stand the way things are going on; I
+am wearing all out. Everybody speaks of my growing thin. Feel of my
+hands. They burn like fire."
+
+"I knew you would be sorry, dear," he said. "Yes, your hands are
+hot, poor child."
+
+There was a long, dreadful silence. And yet I was speaking, and
+perhaps he was. I was begging and beseeching God not to let us drift
+apart, not to let us lose one jot or tittle of our love to each
+other, to enable me to understand my dear, dear husband and make him
+understand me.
+
+Then Ernest began.
+
+"What was it vexed you, dear? What is it you can't stand? Tell me. I
+am your husband, I love you, I want to make you happy."
+
+"Why, you are having so many secrets that you keep from me; and you
+treat me as if I were only a child, consulting Martha about
+everything. And of late you seem to have forgotten that I am at the
+table and never help me to anything!"
+
+"Secrets!" he re-echoed. "What possible secrets can I have?"
+
+"I don't know," I said, sinking wearily back on the sofa. "Indeed,
+Ernest, I don't want to be selfish or exacting, but I am very
+unhappy."
+
+"Yes, I see it, poor child. And if I have neglected you at the table
+I do not wonder you are out of patience. I know how it has happened.
+While you were pouring out the coffee I busied myself in caring for
+my father and Martha, and so forgot you. I do not give this as an
+excuse, but as a reason. I have really no excuse, and am ashamed of
+myself."
+
+"Don't say that, darling," I cried, "it is I who ought to be ashamed
+for making such an ado about a trifle."
+
+"It is not a trifle," he said; "and now to the other points. I dare
+say I have been careless about consulting Martha. But she has always
+been a sort of oracle in our family, and we all look up to her, and
+she is so much older than you. Then as to the secrets. Martha comes
+to my office to help me look over my books. I have been careless
+about my accounts, and she has kindly undertaken to attend to them
+for me."
+
+"Could not I have done that?"
+
+"No; why should your little head be troubled about money matters? But
+to go on. I see that it was thoughtless in me not to tell you what we
+were about. But I am greatly perplexed and harassed in many ways.
+Perhaps you would feel better to know all about it. I have only kept
+it from you to spare you all the anxiety I could."
+
+"Oh, Ernest," I said, "ought not a wife to share in all her husband's
+cares?"
+
+"No," he returned; "but I will tell you all that is annoying me now.
+My father was in business in our native town, and went on
+prosperously for many years. Then the tide turned-he met with loss
+after loss, till nothing remained but the old homestead, and on that
+there was a mortgage. We concealed the state of things from my
+mother; her health was delicate, and we never let her know a trouble
+we could spare her. Now she has gone, and we have found it necessary
+to sell our old home and to divide and scatter the family. My father's
+mental distress when he found others suffering from his own losses
+threw him into the state in which you see him now. I have therefore
+assumed his debts, and with God's help hope in time to pay them to
+the uttermost farthing. It will be necessary for us to live
+economically until this is done. There are two pressing cases that I
+am trying to meet at once. This has given me a preoccupied air, I
+have no doubt, and made you suspect and misunderstand me. But now you
+know the whole, my darling."
+
+I felt my injustice and childish folly very keenly, and told him so.
+
+"But I think, dear Ernest," I added, "if you will not be hurt at my
+saying so, that you have led me to it by not letting me share at once
+in your cares. If you had at the outset just told me the whole story,
+you would have enlisted my sympathies in your father's behalf, and in
+your own. I should have seen the reasonableness of your breaking up
+the old home and bringing him here, and it would have taken the edge
+of my bitter, bitter disappointment about my mother."
+
+"I feel very sorry about that," he said. "It would be a real pleasure
+to have her here. But as things are now, she could not be happy with
+us."
+
+"There is no room," I put in.
+
+"I am truly sorry. And now my dear little wife must have patience
+with her stupid blundering old husband, and we'll start together once
+more fair and square. Don't wait, next time, till you are so full
+that you boil over; the moment I annoy you by my inconsiderate ways,
+come right and tell me."
+
+I called myself all the horrid names I could think of.
+
+"May I ask one thing more, now we are upon the subject?" I said at
+last. "Why couldn't your sister Helen have come here instead of
+Martha?"
+
+He smiled a little.
+
+"In the first place, Helen would be perfectly if she had the care of
+father in his present. She is too young to have such responsibility.
+In the second place, my brother John, with whom she has gone to live,
+has a wife who would be quite crushed by my father and Martha. She is
+one of those little tender, soft souls one could crush fingers. Now,
+you are not of that sort; you have force of character enough to
+enable you to live with them, while maintaining your own dignity and
+remaining yourself in spite of circum stances."
+
+"I thought you admired Martha above all thing and wanted me to be
+exactly like her."
+
+"I do admire her, but I do not want you to be like anybody but
+yourself."
+
+"But you nearly killed me by suggesting that I should take heed how I
+talked in your father's presence."
+
+"Yes, dear; it was very stupid of me, but my father has a standard of
+excellence in his mind by which he tests every woman; this standard
+is my mother. She had none of your life and fun in her, and perhaps
+would not have appreciated your droll way of putting things any
+better than he and Martha do."
+
+I could not help sighing a little when I thought what sort of people
+were watching my every word.
+
+"There is nothing amiss to my mind," Ernest continued, "in your gay
+talk; but my father has his own views as to what constitutes a
+religious character and cannot understand that real earnestness and
+real, genuine mirthfulness are consistent with each other."
+
+He had to go now, and we parted as if for a week's separation, this
+one talk had brought us so near to each other. I understand him now
+as I never have done, and feel that he has given me as real a proof
+of his affection by unlocking the door of his heart and letting me
+see its cares, as I give him in my wild pranks and caresses and
+foolish speeches. How truly noble it is in him to take up his
+father's burden in this way! I must contrive to help to lighten it.
+
+
+
+Chapter 12
+
+XII.
+
+NOVEMBER 6.
+
+AUNTY has put me in the way of doing that. I could not tell her the
+whole story, of course, but I made her understand that Ernest needed
+money for a generous purpose, and that I wanted to help him in it.
+She said the children needed both music and drawing lessons, and that
+she should be delighted if I would take them in hand. Aunty does not
+care a fig for accomplishments, but I think I am right in accepting
+her offer, as the children ought to learn to sing and to play and to
+draw. Of course I cannot have them come here, as Ernest's father
+could not bear the noise they would make; besides, I want to take him
+by surprise, and keep the whole thing a secret.
+
+Nov. 14.-I have seen by the way Martha draws down the corners of her
+mouth of late, that I am unusually out of favor with her. This
+evening, Ernest, coming home quite late, found me lolling back in my
+chair, idling, after a hard day's work with my little cousins, and
+Martha sewing nervously away at the rate of ten knots an hour, which
+is the first pun I ever made.
+
+"Why will you sit up and sew at such a rate, Martha?" he asked.
+
+She twitched at her thread, broke it, and began with a new one before
+she replied.
+
+"I suppose you find it convenient to have a whole shirt to your
+back."
+
+I saw then that she was making his shirts! It made me both hot and
+cold at once. What must Ernest think of me?
+
+It is plain enough what he thinks of her, for he said, quite warmly,
+for him--
+
+"This is really too kind."
+
+What right has she to prowl round among Ernest's things and pry into
+the state of his wardrobe? If I had not had my time so broken up with
+giving lessons, I should have found out that he needed new shirts and
+set to work on them. Though I must own I hate shirt-making. I could
+not help showing that I felt aggrieved. Martha defended herself by
+saying that she knew young people would be young people, and would
+gad about, shirts or no shirts. Now it is not her fault that she
+thinks I waste my time gadding about, but I am just as angry with her
+as if she did. Oh, why couldn't I have had Helen, to be a pleasant
+companion and friend to me, instead of this old-well I won't say
+what.
+
+And really, with so much to make me happy, what would become of me if
+I had no trials?
+
+Nov. 15.-To-day Martha has a house-cleaning mania, and has dragged me
+into it by representing the sin and misery of those deluded mortals
+who think servants know how to sweep and to scrub. In spite of my
+resolution not to get under her thumb, I have somehow let her rule
+and reign over me to such an extent that I can hardly sit up long
+enough to write this. Does the whole duty of woman consist in keeping
+her house distressingly clean and prim; in making and baking and
+preserving and pickling; in climbing to the top shelves of closets
+lest haply a little dust should lodge there, and getting down on her
+hands and knees to inspect the carpet? The truth is there is not one
+point of sympathy between Martha and myself, not one. One would think
+that our love to Ernest would furnish it. But her love aims at the
+abasement of his character and mine at its elevation. She thinks I
+should bow down to and worship him, jump up and offer him my chair
+when he comes in, feed him with every unwholesome dainty he fancies,
+and feel myself honored by his acceptance of these services. I think
+it is for him to rise and offer me a seat, because I am a woman and
+his wife; and that a silly subservience on my part is degrading to
+him and to myself. And I am afraid I make known these sentiments to
+her in a most unpalatable way.
+
+Nov. 18.-Oh, I am so happy that I sing for joy! Dear Ernest has
+given me such a delightful surprise! He says he has persuaded James
+to come and spend his college days here, and finally study medicine
+with him. Dear, darling old James! He is to be here to-morrow. He is
+to have the little hall bedroom fitted up for him, and he will be
+here several years. Next to having mother, this is the nicest thing
+that could happen. We love each other so dearly, and get along so
+beautifully together I wonder how he'll like Martha with her grim
+ways, and Ernest's father with his melancholy ones.
+
+Nov. 30.-James has come, and the house already seems lighter and
+cheerier. He is not in the least annoyed by Martha or her father, and
+though he is as jovial as the day is long, they actually seem to like
+him. True to her theory on the subject, Martha invariably rises at
+his entrance, and offers him her seat! He pretends not to see it, and
+runs to get one for her! Then she takes comfort in seeing him consume
+her good things, since his gobbling them down is a sort of tacit
+tribute to their merits.
+
+Mrs. Embury was here to-day. She says there is not much the matter
+with Ernest's father, that he has only got the hypo. I don't know
+exactly what this is, but I believe it is thinking something is the
+matter with you when there isn't. At any rate I put it to you, my
+dear old journal, whether it is pleasant to live with people who
+behave in this way?
+
+In the first place all he talks about is his fancied disease. He gets
+book after book from the office and studies and ponders his case till
+he grows quite yellow. One day he says he has found out the seat of
+his disease to be the liver, and changes his diet to meet that view
+of the case. Martha has to do him up in mustard, and he takes kindly
+to blue pills. In a day or two he finds his liver is all right, but
+that his brain is all wrong. The mustard goes now to the back of his
+neck, and he takes solemn leave of us all, with the assurance that
+his last hour has come. Finding that he survives the night, however,
+he transfers the seat of his disease to the heart, spends hours in
+counting his pulse, refuses to take exercise lest he should bring on
+palpitations, and warns us all to prepare to follow him. Everybody
+who comes in has to hear the whole story, every one prescribes
+something, and he tries each remedy in turn. These all failing to
+reach his case, he is plunged into ten-fold gloom. He complains
+that God has cast him off forever, and that his sins are like the
+sands of the sea for number. I am such a goose that I listen to all
+these varying moods and symptoms with the solemn conviction that he
+is going to die immediately; I bathe his head, and count his pulse,
+and fan him, and take down his dying depositions for Ernest's solace
+after he has gone. And I talk theology to him by the hour, while
+Martha bakes and brews in the kitchen, or makes mince pies, after
+eating which one might give him the whole Bible at one dose, without
+the smallest effect.
+
+To-day I stood by his chair, holding his head and whispering such
+consoling passages as I thought might comfort him, when James burst
+in, singing and tossing his cap in the air.
+
+"Come here, young man, and hear my last testimony. I am about to die.
+The end draws near," were the sepulchral words that made him bring
+his song to an abrupt close.
+
+"I shall take it very ill of you, sir," quoth James, "if you go and
+die before giving me that cane you promised me."
+
+Who could die decently under such circumstances? The poor old man
+revived immediately, but looked a good deal injured. After James had
+gone out, he said:
+
+"It is very painful to one who stands on the very verge of the
+eternal world to see the young so thoughtless."
+
+"But James is not thoughtless," I said. "It is only his merry way."
+
+"Daughter Katherine," he went on, "you are very kind to the old man,
+and you will have your reward. But I wish I could feel sure of your
+state before God. I greatly fear you deceive yourself, and that the
+ground of your hope is delusive."
+
+I felt the blood rush to my face. At first I was staggered a good
+deal. But is a mortal man who cannot judge of his own state to decide
+mine? It is true he sees my faults; anybody can, who looks. But he
+does not see my prayers, or my tears of shame and sorrow; he does not
+know how many hasty words I repress; how earnestly I am aiming, all
+the day long, to do right in all the little details of life. He does
+not know that it costs my fastidious nature an appeal to God every
+time I kiss his poor old face, and that what would be an act of
+worship in him is an act of self-denial in me. How should he? The
+Christian life is a hidden known only by the eye that seeth in
+secret. And I do believe this life is mine.
+
+Up to this time I have contrived to get along without calling
+Ernest's father by any name. I mean now to make myself turn over a
+new leaf.
+
+DECEMBER 7.-James is my perpetual joy and pride. We read and sing
+together, just as we used to do in our old school days. Martha sits
+by, with her work, grimly approving; for is he not a man? And, as if
+my cup of felicity were not full enough, I am to have my dear old
+pastor come here to settle over this church, and I shall once more
+hear his beloved voice in the pulpit. Ernest has managed the whole
+thing. He says the state of Dr. C.'s health makes the change quite
+necessary, and that he can avail himself of the best surgical advice
+this city affords, in case his old difficulties recur. I rejoice for
+myself and for this church, but mother will miss him sadly.
+
+I am leading a very busy, happy life, only I am, perhaps, working a
+little too hard. What with my scholars, the extra amount of housework
+Martha contrives to get out of me, the practicing I must keep up if I
+am to teach, and the many steps I have to take, I have not only no
+idle moments, but none too many for recreation. Ernest is so busy
+himself that he fortunately does not see what a race I am running.
+
+JANUARY 16, 1838.-The first anniversary of our wedding-day, and like
+all days, has had its lights and its shades. I thought I would
+celebrate it in such a way as to give pleasure to everybody, and
+spent a good deal of time in getting up a little gift for each, from
+Ernest and myself. And I took special pains to have a good dinner,
+particularly for father. Yes, I had made up my mind to call him by
+that sacred name for the first time to-day, cost what it may. But he
+shut himself up in his room directly after breakfast, and when dinner
+was ready refused to come down. This cast a gloom over us all. Then
+Martha was nearly distracted because a valuable dish had been broken
+in the kitchen, and could not recover her equanimity at all. Worst of
+all Ernest, who is not in the least sentimental, never said a word
+about our wedding-day, and didn't give me a thing! I have kept
+hoping all day that he would make me some little present, no matter
+how small, but now it is too late; he has gone out to be gone all
+night, probably, and thus ends the day, an utter failure.
+
+I feel a good deal disappointed. Besides, when I look back over this
+my first year of married life, I do not feel satisfied with myself at
+all. I can't help feeling that I have been selfish and unreasonable
+towards Ernest in a great many ways, and as contrary towards Martha
+as if I enjoyed a state of warfare between us. And I have felt a good
+deal of secret contempt for her father, with his moods and tenses,
+his pill-boxes and his plasters, his feastings and his fastings. I do
+not understand how a Christian can make such slow progress as I do,
+and how old faults can hang on so.
+
+If I had made any real progress, should I not be sensible of it?
+
+I have been reading over the early part of this journal, and when I
+came to the conversation I had with Mrs. Cabot, in which I made a
+list of my wants, I was astonished that I could ever have had such
+contemptible ones. Let me think what I really and truly most want
+now.
+
+First of all, then, if God should speak to me at this moment and
+offer to give just one thing, and that alone, I should say without
+hesitation,
+
+Love to Thee, O my Master!
+
+Next to that, if I could have one thing more, I would choose to be a
+thoroughly unselfish, devoted wife. Down in my secret heart I know
+there lurks another wish, which I am ashamed of. It is that in some
+way or other, some right way, I could be delivered from Martha and
+her father. I shall never be any better while they are here to tempt
+me!
+
+FEBRUARY 1.-Ernest spoke to-day of one of his patients, a Mrs.
+Campbell, who is a great sufferer, but whom he describes as the
+happiest, most cheerful person he ever met. He rarely speaks of his
+patients. Indeed, he rarely speaks of anything. I felt strangely
+attracted by what he said of her, and asked so many questions that at
+last he proposed to take me to see her. I caught at the idea very
+eagerly, and have just come home from the visit greatly moved and
+touched. She is confined to her bed, and is quite helpless, and at
+times her sufferings are terrible. She received me with a sweet
+smile, however, and led me on to talk more of myself than I ought to
+have done. I wish Ernest had not left me alone with her, so that I
+should have had the restraint of his presence.
+
+FEB. 14.-I am so fascinated with Mrs. Campbell that I cannot help
+going to see her again and again. She seems to me like one whose
+conflict and dismay are all over, and who looks on other human beings
+with an almost divine love and pity. To look at life as she does, to
+feel as she does, to have such a personal love to Christ as she has,
+I would willingly go through every trial and sorrow. When I told her
+so, she smiled, a little sadly.
+
+"Much as you envy me," she said, "my faith is not yet so strong that
+I do not shudder at the thought of a young enthusiastic girl like
+you, going through all I have done in order to learn a few simple
+lessons which God was willing to teach me sooner and without the use
+of a rod, if I had been ready for them."
+
+"But you are so happy now," I said.
+
+"Yes, I am happy," she replied, "and such happiness is worth all it
+costs. If my flesh shudders at the remembrance of what I have
+endured, my faith sustains God through the whole. But tell me a
+little more about yourself, my dear. I should so love to give you a
+helping hand, if I might."
+
+"You know," I began, "dear Mrs. Campbell, that there are some trials
+that cannot do us any good. They only call out all there is in us
+that is unlovely and severe."
+
+"I don't know of any such trials," she replied.
+
+"Suppose you had to live with people who were perfectly uncongenial;
+who misunderstood you, and who were always getting into your way as
+stumbling-blocks?"
+
+"If I were living with them and they made me unhappy, I would ask God
+to relieve me of this trial if He thought it best. If He did not
+think it best, I would then try to find out the reason. He might have
+two reasons. One would be the good they might do me. The other the
+good I might do them."
+
+"But in the case I was supposing, neither party can be of the least
+use to the other."
+
+"You forget perhaps the indirect good one may in by living with
+uncongenial, tempting persons. First such people do good by the very
+self-denial and self-control their mere presence demands. Then, their
+making one's home less home-like and perfect than it would be in
+their absence, may help to render our real home in heaven more
+attractive."
+
+"But suppose one cannot exercise self-control, and is always flying
+out and flaring up?" I objected.
+
+"I should say that a Christian who was always doing that," she
+replied, gravely, "was in pressing need of just the trial God sent
+when He shut him up to such a life of hourly temptation. We only know
+ourselves and what we really are, when the force of circumstances
+bring us out."
+
+"It is very mortifying and painful to find how weak one is."
+
+"That is true. But our mortifications are some of God's best
+physicians, and do much toward healing our pride and self-conceit."
+
+"Do you really think, then, that God deliberately appoints to some of
+His children a lot where their worst passions are excited, with a
+desire to bring good out of this seeming evil? Why I have always
+supposed the best thing that could happen to me, instance, would be
+to have a home exactly to my mind; a home where all were forbearing,
+loving and good-tempered, a sort of little heaven below."
+
+"If you have not such a home, my dear, are you sure it is not partly
+your own fault?"
+
+"Of course it is my own fault. Because I am very quick-tempered I
+want to live with good-tempered people."
+
+"That is very benevolent in you," she said, archly.
+
+I colored, but went on.
+
+"Oh, I know I am selfish. And therefore I want live with those who
+are not so. I want to live with persons to whom I can look for an
+example, and who will constantly stimulate me to something higher."
+
+"But if God chooses quite another lot for you, you may be sure that
+He sees that you need something totally different from what you want.
+You just now that you would gladly go through any trial in order to
+attain a personal love to Christ that should become the ruling
+principle of your life. Now as soon as God sees this desire in you,
+is He not kind, is He not wise, in appointing such trials as He knows
+will lead to this end?"
+
+I meditated long before I answered. Was God really asking me not
+merely to let Martha and her father live with me on sufferance, but
+to rejoice that He had seen fit to let them harass and embitter my
+domestic life?
+
+"I thank you for the suggestion," I said, at last.
+
+"I want to say one thing more," Mrs. Campbell resumed, after another
+pause. "We look at our fellow-men too much from the standpoint of our
+own prejudices. They may be wrong, they may have their faults and
+foibles, they may call out all that is meanest and most hateful in
+us. But they are not all wrong; they have their virtues, and when
+they excite our bad passions by their own, they may be as ashamed and
+sorry as we are irritated. And I think some of the best, most
+contrite, most useful of men and women, whose prayers prevail with
+God, and bring down blessings into the homes in which they dwell
+often possess unlovely traits that furnish them with their best
+discipline. The very fact that they are ashamed of themselves drives
+them to God; they feel safe in His presence, and while they lie in
+the very dust of self-confusion at His feet they are dear to Him and
+have power with Him."
+
+"That is a comforting word, and I thank you for it," I said. My heart
+was full, and I longed to stay and hear her talk on. But I had
+already exhausted her strength. On the way home I felt as I suppose
+people do when they have caught a basketful of fish. I always am
+delighted to catch a new idea; I thought I would get all the benefit
+out of Martha and her father, and as I went down to tea, after taking
+off my things, felt like a holy martyr who had as good as won a
+crown.
+
+I found, however, that the butter was horrible. Martha had insisted
+that she alone was capable of selecting that article, and had ordered
+a quantity from her own village which I could not eat myself and was
+ashamed to have on my table. I pushed back my plate in disgust.
+
+"I hope, Martha, that you have not ordered much of this odious
+stuff!" I cried.
+
+Martha replied that it was of the very first quality, and appealed to
+her father and Ernest, who both agreed with her, which I thought very
+unkind and unjust. I rushed into a hot debate on the subject, during
+which Ernest maintained that ominous silence that indicates his not
+being pleased, and it irritated and led me on. I would far rather he
+should say, "Katy, you are behaving like a child and I wish you would
+stop talking."
+
+"Martha," I said, "you will persist that the butter is good, because
+you ordered it. If you will only own that, I won't say another word."
+
+"I can't say it," she returned. "Mrs. Jones' butter is invariably
+good. I never heard it found fault with before. The trouble is you
+are so hard to please."
+
+"No, I am not. And you can't convince me that if the buttermilk is
+not perfectly worked out, the butter could be fit to eat."
+
+This speech I felt to be a masterpiece. It was time to let her know
+how learned I was on the subject of butter, though I wasn't brought
+up to make it or see it made.
+
+But here Ernest put in a little oil.
+
+"I think you are both right," he said. "Mrs. Jones makes good butter,
+but just this once she failed. I dare say it won't happen again, and
+mean while this can be used for making seed-cakes, and we can get a
+new supply."
+
+This was his masterpiece. A whole firkin of butter made up into
+seed-cakes!
+
+Martha turned to encounter him on that head, and I slipped off to my
+room to look, with a miserable sense of disappointment, at my folly
+and weakness in making so much ado about nothing. I find it hard to
+believe that it can do me good to have people live with me who like
+rancid butter, and who disagree with me in everything else.
+
+
+
+Chapter 13
+
+XIII.
+
+MARCH 1.
+
+AUNTY sent for us all to dine with her to-day to celebrate Lucy's
+fifteenth birthday. Ever since Lucy behaved so heroically in regard
+to little Emma, really saving her life, Ernest says Aunty seems to
+feel that she cannot do enough for her. The child has taken the most
+unaccountable fancy to me, strangely enough, and when we got there
+she came to meet me with something like cordiality.
+
+"Mamma permits me to be the bearer of agreeable news," she said,
+"because this is my birthday. A friend, of whom you are very fond,
+has just arrived, and is impatient to embrace you.
+
+"To embrace me?" I cried. "You foolish child!" And the next moment I
+found myself in my mother's arms!
+
+The despised Lucy had been the means of giving me this pleasure. It
+seems that Aunty had told her she should choose her own birthday
+treat, and that, after solemn meditation, she had decided that to see
+dear mother again would be the most agreeable thing she could think
+of. I have never told you, dear journal, why I did not go home last
+summer, and never shall. If you choose to fancy that I couldn't
+afford it you can!
+
+Well! wasn't it nice to see mother, and to read in her dear, loving
+face that she was satisfied with her poor, wayward Katy, and fond of
+her as ever! I only longed for Ernest's coming, that she might see us
+together, and see how he loved me.
+
+He came; I rushed out to meet him and dragged him in. But it seemed
+as if he had grown stupid and awkward. All through the dinner I
+watched for one of those loving glances which should proclaim to
+mother the good understanding between us, but watched in vain.
+
+"It will come by and by," I thought. "When we get by ourselves mother
+will see how fond of me he is." But "by and by" it was just the same.
+I was preoccupied, and mother asked me if I were well. It was all
+very foolish I dare say, and yet I did want to have her know that
+with all my faults he still loves me. Then, besides this
+disappointment, I have to reproach myself for misunderstanding poor
+Lucy as I have done. Because she was not all fire and fury like
+myself, I need not have assumed that she had no heart. It is just
+like me; I hope I shall never be so severe in my judgment again.
+
+APRIL 30.-Mother has just gone. Her visit has done me a world of
+good. She found out something to like in father at once, and then
+something good in Martha. She says father's sufferings are real, not
+fancied; that his error is not knowing where to locate his disease,
+and is starving one week and over-eating the next. She charged me not
+to lay up future misery for myself by misjudging him now, and to
+treat him as a daughter ought without the smallest regard to his
+appreciation of it. Then as to Martha, she declares that I have no
+idea how much she does to reduce our expenses, to keep the house in
+order and to relieve us from care. "But, mother," I said, "did you
+notice what horrid butter we have? And it is all her doing."
+
+"But the butter won't last forever," she replied. "Don't make
+yourself miserable about such a trifle. For my part, it is a great
+relief to me to know that with your delicate health you have this
+tower of strength to lean on."
+
+"But my health is not delicate, mother."
+
+"You certainly look pale and thin."
+
+"Oh, well," I said, whereupon she fell to giving me all sorts of
+advice about getting up on step-ladders, and climbing on chairs, and
+sewing too much and all that.
+
+JUNE 15.-The weather, or something, makes me rather languid and
+stupid. I begin to think that Martha is not an entire nuisance in the
+house. I have just been to see Mrs. Campbell. In answer to my routine
+of lamentations, she took up a book and read me what was called, as
+nearly as I can remember, "Four steps that lead to peace."
+
+"Be desirous of doing the will of another rather than thine own."
+
+"Choose always to have less, rather than more."
+
+"Seek always the lowest place, and to be inferior to every one."
+
+"Wish always, and pray, that the will of God may be wholly fulfilled
+in thee."
+
+I was much struck with these directions; but I said, despondently:
+
+"If peace can only be found at the end of such hard roads, I am sure
+I shall always be miserable."
+
+"Are you miserable now?" she asked.
+
+"Yes, just now I am. I do not mean that I have no happiness; I mean
+that I am in a disheartened mood, weary of going round and round in
+circles, committing the same sins, uttering the same confessions, and
+making no advance."
+
+"My dear," she said, after a time, "have you a perfectly distinct,
+settled view of what Christ is to the human soul?"
+
+"I do not know. I understand, of course, more or less perfectly, that
+my salvation depends on Him alone; it is His gift."
+
+"But do you see, with equal clearness, that your sanctification must
+be as fully His gift, as your salvation is?"
+
+"No," I said, after a little thought. "I have had a feeling that He
+has done His part, and now I must do mine."
+
+"My dear," she said, with much tenderness and feeling, "then the
+first thing you have to do is to learn Christ."
+
+"But how?"
+
+"On your knees, my child, on your knees!" She was tired, and I came
+away; and I have indeed been on my knees.
+
+JULY 1.-I think that I do begin, dimly it is true, but really, to
+understand that this terrible work which I was trying to do myself,
+is Christ's work, and must be done and will be done by Him. I take
+some pleasure in the thought, and wonder why it has all this time
+been hidden from me, especially after what Dr. C. said in his letter.
+But I get hold of this idea in a misty, unsatisfactory way. If Christ
+is to do all, what am I to do? And have I not been told, over and
+over again, that the Christian life is one of conflict, and that I am
+to fight like a good soldier?
+
+AUGUST 5.-Dr. Cabot has come just as I need him most. I long for one
+of those good talks with him which always used to strengthen me so. I
+feel a perfect weight of depression that makes me a burden to myself
+and to poor Ernest, who, after visiting sick people all day, needs to
+come home to a cheerful wife. But he comforts me with the assurance
+that this is merely physical despondency, and that I shall get over
+it by and by. How kind, how even tender he is! My heart is getting
+all it wants from him, only I am too stupid to enjoy him as I ought.
+Father, too, talks far less about his own bad feelings, and seems
+greatly concerned at mine. As to Martha I have done trying to get
+sympathy or love from her. She cannot help it, I suppose, but she is
+very hard and dry towards me, and I feel such a longing to throw
+myself on her mercy, and to have one little smile to assure me that
+she has forgiven me for being Ernest's wife, and so different from
+what she would have chosen for him.
+
+Dr. Elliott to Mrs. Mortimer:
+
+OCTOBER 4, 1838.
+
+My dear Katy's Mother--You will rejoice with us when I tell you that
+we are the happy parents of a very fine little boy. My dearest wife
+sends "an ocean of love" to you, and says she will write her self
+to-morrow. That I shall not be very likely to allow, as you will
+imagine. She is doing extremely well, and we have everything to be
+grateful for. Your affectionate Son, J. E. ELLIOTT.
+
+Mrs. Crofton to Mrs. Mortimer:
+
+I am sure, my dear sister, that the doctor has not written you more
+than five lines about the great event which has made such a stir in
+our domestic circle. So I must try to supply the details you will
+want to hear.... I need not add that our darling Katy behaved nobly.
+Her self-forgetfulness and consideration for others were really
+beautiful throughout the whole scene. The doctor may well be proud of
+her, and I took care to tell him so ill presence of that dreadful
+sister of his. I never met so angular, so uncompromising a person as
+she is in all my life. She does not understand Katy, and never can,
+and I find it hard to realize that living with such a person can
+furnish a wholesome discipline, which is even more desirable than the
+most delightful home. And yet I not only know that is true in the
+abstract, but I see that it is so in the fact. Katy is acquiring both
+self-control and patience and her Christian character is developing
+in a way that amazes me. I cannot but hope that God will, in time,
+deliver her from this trial; indeed, feel sure that when it has done
+its beneficent work He will do so. Martha Elliott is a good woman,
+but her goodness is without grace or beauty. She takes excellent care
+of Katy, keeps her looking as if she had just come out of a band-box,
+as the saying and always has her room in perfect order. But one
+misses the loving word, the re-assuring smile, the delicate,
+thoughtful little forbearance, that ought to adorn every sick-room,
+and light it up with genuine sunshine. There is one comfort about it,
+however, and that is that I can spoil dear Katy to my heart's
+content.
+
+As to the baby, he is a fine little fellow, and his mother is so
+happy in him that she can afford to do without some other pleasures.
+I shall write again in a few days. Meanwhile, you may rest assured
+that I love your Katy almost as well as you do, and shall be with her
+most of the time till she is quite herself again.
+
+James
+
+to his mother:
+
+Of course there never was such a baby before on the face of the
+earth. Katy is so nearly wild with joy, that you can't get her to eat
+or sleep or do any of the proper things that her charming
+sister-in-law thinks becoming under the circumstances. You never saw
+anything so pretty in your life, as she is now. I hope the doctor is
+as much in love with her as I am. He is the best fellow in the world,
+and Katy is just the wife for him.
+
+Nov. 4.-My darling baby is a month old to-day. I never saw such a
+splendid child. I love him so that I lie awake nights to watch him.
+Martha says, in her dry way, that I had better show my love by
+sleeping and eating for him, and Ernest says I shall, as soon as I
+get stronger. But I don't get strong, and that discourages me.
+
+Nov. 26.-I begin to feel rather more like myself, and as if I could
+write with less labor. I have had in these few past weeks such a
+revelation of suffering, and such a revelation of joy, as mortal mind
+can hardly conceive of. The world I live in now is a new world; a
+world full of suffering that leads to unutterable felicity. Oh, this
+precious, precious baby! How can I thank God enough for giving him to
+me!
+
+I see now why He has put some thorns into my domestic life; but for
+them I should be too happy to live. It does not seem just the moment
+to complain, and yet, as I can speak to no one, it is a relief, a
+great relief, to write about my trials. During my whole sickness,
+Martha has been so hard, so cold, so unsympathizing that sometimes it
+has seemed as if my cup of trial could not hold another drop. She
+routed me out of bed when I was so languid that everything seemed a
+burden, and when sitting up made me faint away. I heard her say to
+herself, that I had no constitution and had no business to get
+married. The worst of all is that during that dreadful night before
+baby came, she kept asking Ernest to lie down and rest, and was sure
+he would kill himself, and all that, while she had not one word of
+pity for me. But, oh, why need I let this rankle in my heart! Why
+cannot I turn my thoughts entirely to my darling baby, my dear
+husband, and all the other sources of joy that make my home a happy
+one in spite of this one discomfort! I hope I am learning some useful
+lessons from my joys and from my trials, and that both will serve to
+make me in earnest, and to keep me so.
+
+DEC. 4.-We have had a great time about poor baby's name. I expected
+to call him Raymond, for my own dear father, as a matter of course.
+It seemed a small gratification for mother in her loneliness. Dear
+mother! How little I have known all these years what I cost her! But
+it seems there has been a Jotham in the family ever since the memory
+of man, each eldest son handing down his father's name to the next in
+descent, and Ernest's real name is Jotham Ernest--of all the
+extraordinary combinations! His mother would add the latter name in
+spite of everything. Ernest behaved very well through the whole
+affair, and said he had no feeling about it all. But he was so
+gratified when I decided to keep up the family custom that I feel
+rewarded for the sacrifice.
+
+Father is in one of his gloomiest moods. As I sat caressing baby
+to-day he said to me:
+
+"Daughter Katherine, I trust you make it a subject of prayer to God
+that you may be kept from idolatry."
+
+"No, father," I returned, "I never do. An idol is something one puts
+in God's place, and I don't put baby there."
+
+He shook his head and said the heart is deceitful above all things,
+and desperately wicked.
+
+"I have heard mother say that we might love an earthly object as much
+as we pleased, if we only love God better." I might have added, but
+of course I didn't; that I prayed every day that I might love Ernest
+and baby better and better. Poor father seemed puzzled and troubled
+by what I did say, and after musing a while, went on thus:
+
+"The Almighty is a great and terrible Being. He cannot bear a rival;
+He will have the whole heart or none of it. When I see a young woman
+so absorbed in a created being as you are in that infant, and in your
+other friends, I tremble for you, I tremble for you!"
+
+"But, father," I persisted, "God gave me this child, and He gave me
+my heart, just as it is."
+
+"Yes; and that heart needs renewing."
+
+"I hope it is renewed," I replied. "But I know there is a great work
+still to be done in it. And the more effectually it is done the more
+loving I shall grow. Don't you see, father? Don't you see that the
+more Christ-like I become the more I shall be filled with love for
+every living thing?"
+
+He shook his head, but pondered long, as he always does, on whatever
+he considers audacious. As for me, I am vexed with my presumption in
+disputing with him, and am sure, too, that I was trying to show off
+what little wisdom I have picked up. Besides, my mountain does not
+stand so strong as it did. Perhaps I am making idols out of Ernest
+and the baby.
+
+JANUARY 16, 1839.-This is our second wedding day. I did not expect
+much from it, after last year's failure. Father was very gloomy at
+breakfast, and retired to his room directly after it. No one could
+get in to make his bed, and he would not come down to dinner. I
+wonder Ernest lets him go on so. But his rule seems to be to let
+everybody have their own way. He certainly lets me have mine. After
+dinner he gave me a book I have been wanting for some time, and had
+asked him for-"The Imitation of Christ." Ever since that day at Mrs.
+Campbell's I have felt that I should like it, though I did think, in
+old times, that it preached too hard a doctrine. I read aloud to him
+the "Four Steps to Peace"; he said they were admirable, and then took
+it from me and began reading to himself, here and there. I felt the
+precious moments when I had got him all to myself were passing away,
+and was becoming quite out of patience with him when the words
+"Constantly seek to have less, rather than more," flashed into my
+mind. I suppose this direction had reference to worldly good, but I
+despise money, and despise people who love it. The riches I crave are
+not silver and gold, but my husband's love and esteem. And of these
+must I desire to have less rather than more? I puzzled myself over
+this question in vain, but when I silently prayed to be satisfied
+with just what God chose to give me of the wealth I crave, yes,
+hunger and thirst for, I certainly felt a sweet content, for the
+time, at least, that was quite resting and quieting. And just as I
+had reached that acquiescent mood Ernest threw down his book, and
+came and caught me in his arms.
+
+"I thank God," he said, "my precious wife, that I married you this
+day. The wisest thing I ever did was when I fell in love with you and
+made a fool of myself!"
+
+What a speech for my silent old darling to make! Whenever he says and
+does a thing out of character, and takes me all by surprise, how
+delightful he is! Now the world is a beautiful world, and so is
+everybody in it. I met Martha on the stairs after Ernest had gone,
+and caught her and kissed her. She looked perfectly astonished.
+
+"What spirits the child has!" I heard her whisper to herself; "no
+sooner down than up again."
+
+And she sighed. Can it be that under that stern and hard crust there
+lie hidden affections and perhaps hidden sorrows?
+
+I ran back and asked, as kindly as I could, "What makes you sigh,
+Martha? Is anything troubling you? Have I done anything to annoy
+you?"
+
+"You do the best you can," she said, and pushed past me to her own
+room.
+
+
+
+Chapter 14
+
+XIV.
+
+JAN. 30.
+
+WHO would have thought I would have anything more to do with poor old
+Susan Green? Dr. Cabot came to see me to-day, and told me the
+strangest thing! It seems that the nurse who performed the last
+offices for her was taken sick about six months ago, and that Dr.
+Cabot visited her from time to time. Her physician said she needed
+nothing but rest and good, nourishing food to restore her strength,
+yet she did not improve at all, and at last it came out that she was
+not taking the food the doctor ordered, because she could not afford
+to do so, having lost what little money she had contrived to save.
+Dr. Cabot, on learning this, gave her enough out of Susan's legacy to
+meet her case, and in doing so told her about that extraordinary
+will. The nurse then assured him that when she reached Susan's room
+and found the state that she was in, and that I was praying with her,
+she had remained waiting in silence, fearing to interrupt me. She saw
+me faint, and sprang forward just in time to catch me and keep me
+from falling.
+
+"I take great pleasure, therefore," Dr. Cabot continued, "in making
+over Susan's little property to you, to whom it belongs; and I cannot
+help congratulating you that you have had the honor and the privilege
+of perhaps leading that poor, benighted soul to Christ, even at the
+eleventh hour."
+
+"Oh, Dr. Cabot," I cried, "what a relief it is to hear you say
+that! For I have always reproached myself for the cowardice that made
+me afraid to speak to her of her Saviour. It takes less courage to
+speak to God than to man."
+
+"It is my belief," replied Dr. Cabot, "that every prayer offered in
+the name of Jesus is sure to have its answer. Every such prayer is
+dictated by the Holy Spirit, and therefore finds acceptance with God;
+and if your cry for mercy on poor Susan's soul did not prevail with
+Him in her behalf, as we may hope it did, then He has answered it in
+some other way."
+
+These words impressed me very much. To think that every one of my
+poor prayers is answered! Every one!
+
+Dr. Cabot then returned to the subject of Susan's will, and in spite
+of all I could say to the contrary, insisted that he had no legal
+right to this money, and that I had. He said he hoped that it would
+help to relieve us from some of the petty economies now rendered
+necessary by Ernest's struggle to meet his father's liabilities.
+Instantly my idol was rudely thrown down from his pedestal. How could
+he reveal to Dr. Cabot a secret he had pretended it cost him so much
+to confide to me, his wife? I could hardly restrain tears of shame
+and vexation, but did control myself so far as to say that I would
+sooner die than appropriate Susan's hard earnings to such a purpose,
+and that I should use it for the poor, as I was sure he would have
+done. He then advised me to invest the principal, and use the
+interest from year to year, as occasions presented themselves. So, I
+shall have more than a hundred dollars to give away each year, as
+long as I live! How perfectly delightful! I can hardly conceive of
+anything that give me so much pleasure! Poor old Susan! How many
+hearts she shall cause to sing for joy!
+
+Feb. 25.-Things have not gone on well of late. Dearly as I love
+Ernest, he has lowered himself in my eye by telling that to Dr.
+Cabot. It would have been far nobler to be silent concerning his
+sacrifices; and he certainly grows harder, graver, sterner every day.
+He is all shut up within himself, and I am growing afraid of him. It
+must be that he is bitterly disappointed in me, and takes refuge in
+this awful silence. Oh, if I could only please him, and know that I
+pleased him, how different my life would be!
+
+Baby does not seem well. I have often plumed myself on the thought
+that having a doctor for his father would be such an advantage to
+him, as he would be ready 'to attack the first symptoms of disease.
+But Ernest hardly listens to me when I express anxiety about this or
+that, and if I ask a question he replies, "Oh, you know better than I
+do. Mothers know by instinct how to manage babies." But I do not
+know by instinct, or in any other way, and I often wish that the time
+I spent over my music had been spent learning how to meet all the
+little emergencies that are constantly arising since baby came. How I
+used to laugh in my sleeve at those anxious mothers who lived near us
+and always seemed to be in hot water. Martha will take baby when I
+have other things to attend to, and she keeps him every Sunday
+afternoon that I may go to church, but she knows no more about his
+physical training than I do. If my dear mother were only here! I feel
+a good deal worn out. What with the care of baby, who is restless at
+night, and with whom I walk about lest he should keep Ernest awake,
+the depressing influence of father's presence, Martha's disdain, and
+Ernest keeping so aloof from me, life seems to me little better than
+a burden that I have not strength to carry and would gladly lay down.
+
+MARCH 3.-If it were not for James I believe I should sink. He is so
+kind and affectionate, so ready to fill up the gaps Ernest leaves
+empty, and is so sunshiny and gay that I cannot be entirely sad.
+Baby, too, is a precious treasure; it would be wicked to cloud his
+little life with my depression. I try to look at him always with a
+smiling face, for he already distinguishes between a cheerful and a
+sad countenance.
+
+I am sure that there is something in Christ's gospel that would
+soothe and sustain me amid these varied trials, if I only knew what
+it is, and how to put forth my hand and take it. But as it is I feel
+very desolate. Ernest often congratulates me on having had such a
+good night's rest, when I have been up and down every hour with baby,
+half asleep frozen and exhausted. But he shall sleep at any rate.
+
+April 5.-The first rays of spring make me more languid than ever.
+Martha cannot be made to understand that nursing such a large,
+voracious baby, losing sleep, and confinement within doors, are
+enough to account for this. She is constantly speaking in terms of
+praise of those who keep up even when they do feel a little out of
+sorts, and says she always does. In the evening, after baby gets to
+sleep, I feel fit for nothing but to lie on the sofa, dozing; but she
+sees in this only a lazy habit, which ought not to be tolerated, and
+is constantly devising ways to rouse and set me at work. If I had
+more leisure for reading, meditation and prayer, I might still be
+happy. But all the morning, I must have baby till he takes his nap,
+and as soon as he gets to sleep I must put my room in order, and by
+that time all the best part of the day is gone. And at night I am so
+tired that I can hardly feel anything but my weariness. That, too, is
+my only chance of seeing Ernest and if I lock my door and fall upon
+my knees, I keep listening for his step, ready to spring to welcome
+should he come. This is wrong, I know, but how can I live without one
+loving word from him, and every day I am hoping it will come.
+
+MAY 2-Aunty was here to-day. I had not seen her for some weeks. She
+exclaimed at my looks in a tone that seemed to upbraid Ernest and
+Martha though of course she did not mean to do that.
+
+"You are not fit to have the whole care of that great boy at night,"
+said she, "and you ought to begin to feed him, both for his sake and
+your own."
+
+"I am willing to take the child at night," Martha said, a little
+stiffly. "But I supposed his mother preferred to keep him herself."
+
+"And so I do," I cried. "I should be perfectly miserable if I had to
+give him up just as he is getting teeth, and so wakeful."
+
+"What are you taking to keep up your strength, dear?" asked Aunty.
+
+"Nothing in particular," I said.
+
+"Very well, it is time the doctor looked after that," she cried. "It
+really never will do to let you run down in this way. Let me look at
+baby. Why, my child, his gums need lancing."
+
+"So I have told Ernest half a dozen times," I declared. "But he is
+always in a hurry, and says another time will do."
+
+"I hope baby won't have convulsions while he is waiting for that
+other time," said Aunty, looking almost savagely at Martha. I never
+saw Aunty so nearly out of humor.
+
+At dinner Martha began.
+
+"I think, brother, the baby needs attention. Mrs. Crofton has been
+here and says so. And she seems to find Katherine run down. I am sure
+if I had known it I should have taken her in hand and built her up.
+But she did not complain."
+
+"She never complains," father here put in, calling all the blood I
+had into my face, my heart so leaped for joy at his kind word.
+
+Ernest looked at me and caught the illumination of my face.
+
+"You look well, dear," he said. "But if you do not feel so you ought
+to tell us. As to baby, I will attend to him directly."
+
+So Martha's one word prevailed where my twenty fell to the ground.
+
+Baby is much relieved, and has fallen into a sweet sleep. And I have
+had time to carry my tired, oppressed heart to my compassionate
+Saviour, and to tell Him what I cannot utter to any human ear. How
+strange it is that when, through many years of leisure and strength,
+prayer was only a task, it is now my chief solace if I can only
+snatch time for it.
+
+Mrs. Embury has a little daughter. How glad I am for her! She is
+going to give it my name. That is a real pleasure.
+
+JULY 4.-Baby is ten months old to-day, and in spite of everything is
+bright and well. I have come home to mother. Ernest waked up at last
+to see that something must be done, and when he is awake he is very
+wide awake. So he brought me home. Dear mother is perfectly
+delighted, only she will make an ado about my health. But I feel a
+good deal better, and think I shall get nicely rested here. How
+pleasant it is to feel myself watched by friendly eyes, my faults
+excused and forgiven, and what is best in me called out. I have been
+writing to Ernest, and have told him honestly how annoyed and pained
+I was at learning that he had told his secret to Dr. Cabot.
+
+JULY 12.-Ernest writes that he has had no communication with Dr.
+Cabot or any one else on subject that, touching his father's honor as
+it does, he regards as a sacred one.
+
+"You say, dear," he said, "you often say, that I do not understand
+you. Are you sure that you understand me?"
+
+Of course I don't. How can I? How can I reconcile his marrying me and
+professing to do it with delight, with his indifference to my
+society, his reserve, his carelessness about my health?
+
+But his letters are very kind, and really warmer than he is. I can
+hardly wait for them, and then, though my pride bids me to be
+reticent as he is, my heart runs away with me, and I pour out upon
+him such floods of affection that I am sure he is half drowned.
+
+Mother says baby is splendid.
+
+AUGUST 1.-When I took leave of Ernest I was glad to get away. I
+thought he would perhaps find after I was gone that he missed
+something out of his life and would welcome me home with a little of
+the old love. But I did not dream that he would not find it easy to
+do without me till summer was over, and when, this morning, he came
+suddenly upon us, carpet-bag in hand, I could do nothing but cry in
+his arms like a tired child.
+
+And now I had the silly triumph of having mother see that he loved
+me!
+
+"How could you get away?" I asked at last. "And what made you come?
+And how long can you stay?"
+
+"I could get away because I would," he replied. "And I came because I
+wanted to come. And I can stay three days."
+
+Three days of Ernest all to myself!
+
+AUGUST 5.-He has gone, but he has left behind him a happy wife and
+the memory of three happy days.
+
+After the first joy of our meeting was over, we had time for just
+such nice long talks as I delight in. Ernest began by upbraiding me a
+little for my injustice in fancying he had betrayed his father to Dr.
+Cabot.
+
+"That is not all," I interrupted, "I even thought you had made a
+boast of the sacrifices you were making."
+
+"That explains your coldness," he returned.
+
+"My coldness! Of all the ridiculous things in the world!" I cried.
+
+"You were cold, for you and I felt it. Don't you know that we
+undemonstrative men prefer loving winsome little women like you, just
+because you are our own opposites? And when the pet kitten turns into
+a cat with claws."
+
+"Now, Ernest, that is really too bad! To compare me to a cat!"
+
+"You certainly did say some sharp things to me about that time."
+
+"Did I, really? Oh, Ernest, how could I?"
+
+"And it was at a moment when I particularly needed your help. But do
+not let us dwell upon it. We love each other; we are both trying to
+do right in all the details of life. I do not think we shall ever get
+very far apart."
+
+"But, Ernest-tell me-are you very, very much disappointed in me?"
+
+"Disappointed? Why, Katy!"
+
+"Then what did make you seem so indifferent? What made you so slow to
+observe how miserably I was, as to health?"
+
+"Did I seem indifferent? I am sure I never loved you better. As to
+your health, I am ashamed of myself. I ought to have seen how feeble
+you were. But the truth is, I was deceived by your bright ways with
+baby. For him you were all smiles and gayety."
+
+"That was from principle," I said, and felt a good deal elated as I
+made the announcement.
+
+"He fell into a fit of musing, and none of my usual devices for
+arousing him had any effect. I pulled his hair and his ears, and
+shook him, but he remained unmoved."
+
+At last he began again.
+
+"Perhaps I owe it to you, dear, to tell you that when I brought my
+father and sister home to live with us, I did not dream how trying a
+thing it would be to you. I did not know that he was a confirmed
+invalid, or that she would prove to possess a nature so entirely
+antagonistic to yours. I thought my father would interest himself in
+reading, visiting, etc, as he used to do. And I thought Martha's
+judgment would be of service to you, while her household skill would
+relieve you of some care. But the whole thing has proved a failure. I
+am harassed by the sight of my father, sitting there in his corner so
+penetrated with gloom; I reproach myself for it, but I almost dread
+coming home. When a man has been all day encompassed with sounds and
+sights of suffering, he naturally longs for cheerful faces and
+cheerful voices in his own house. Then Martha's pertinacious-I won't
+say hostility to my little wife-what shall I call it?"
+
+"It is only want of sympathy. She is too really good to be hostile to
+any one.
+
+"Thank you, my darling," he said, "I believe you do her justice."
+
+"I am afraid I have not been as forbearing with her as I ought," I
+said. "But, oh, Ernest, it is because I have been jealous of her all
+along!"
+
+"That is really too absurd."
+
+"You certainly have treated her with more deference than you have me.
+You looked up to her and looked down upon me. At least it seemed so."
+
+"My dear child, you have misunderstood the whole thing. I gave Martha
+just what she wanted most; she likes to be looked up to. And I gave
+you what I thought you wanted most, my tenderest love. And I expected
+that I should have your sympathy amid the trials with which I am
+burdened, and that with your strong nature I might look to you to
+help me bear them. I know you have the worst of it, dear child, but
+then you have twice my strength. I believe women almost always have
+more than men."
+
+"I have, indeed, misunderstood you. I thought you liked to have them
+here, and that Martha's not fancying me influenced you against me.
+But now I know just what you want of me, and I can give it, darling."
+
+After this all our cloud melted away. I only long to go home and show
+Ernest that he shall have one cheerful face about him, and have one
+cheerful voice.
+
+AUGUST 12.-I have had a long letter from Ernest to-day. He says he
+hopes he has not been selfish and unkind in speaking of his father
+and sister as he has done, because he truly loves and honors them
+both, and wants me to do so, if I can. His father had called them up
+twice to see him die and to receive his last messages. This always
+happens when Ernest has been up all the previous night; there seems a
+fatality about it.
+
+
+
+Chapter 15
+
+XV.
+
+OCTOBER 4
+
+HOME again, and with my dear Ernest delighted to see me. Baby is a
+year old to-day, and, as usual, father, who seems to abhor anything
+like a merry-making, took himself off to his room. To-morrow he will
+be all the worse for it, and will be sure to have a theological
+battle with somebody.
+
+OCTOBER 5.-The somebody was his daughter Katherine, as usual. Baby
+was asleep in my lap and I reached out for a book which proved to be
+a volume of Shakespeare which had done long service as an ornament to
+the table, but which nobody ever read on account of the small print.
+The battle then began thus:
+
+Father.-"I regret to see that worldly author in your hands, my
+daughter."
+
+Daughter-a little mischievously.-"Why, were you wanting to talk,
+father?
+
+"No, I am too feeble to talk to-day. My pulse is very weak."
+
+"Let me read aloud to you, then."
+
+"Not from that profane book."
+
+"It would do you good. You never take any recreation. Do let me read
+a little."
+
+Father gets nervous.
+
+"Recreation is a snare. I must keep my soul ever fixed on divine
+things."
+
+"But can you?"
+
+"No, alas, no. It is my grief and shame that I do not."
+
+"But if you would indulge yourself in a little harmless mirth now and
+then, your mind would get rested and you would return to divine
+things with fresh zeal. Why should not the mind have its seasons of
+rest as well as the body?"
+
+"We shall have time to rest in heaven. Our business here on earth is
+to be sober and vigilant because of our adversary; not to be reading
+plays."
+
+"I don't make reading plays my business, dear father. I make it my
+rest and amusement."
+
+"Christians do not need amusement; they find rest, refreshment, all
+they want, in God."
+
+"Do you, father?"
+
+"Alas, no. He seems a great way off."
+
+"To me He seems very near. So near that He can see every thought of
+my heart. Dear father, it is your disease that makes everything so
+unreal to you. God is really so near, really loves us so; is so sorry
+for us! And it seems hard, when you are so good, and so intent on
+pleasing Him, that you get no comfort out of Him."
+
+"I am not good, my daughter I am a vile worm of the dust."
+
+"Well, God is good, at any rate, and He would never have sent His Son
+to die for you if He did not love you." So then I began to sing.
+Father likes to hear me sing, and the sweet sense I had that all I
+had been saying was true and more than true, made me sing with joyful
+heart.
+
+I hope it is not a mere miserable presumption that makes me dare to
+talk so to poor father. Of course, he is ten times better than I am,
+and knows ten times as much, but his disease, whatever it is, keeps
+his mind befogged. I mean to begin now to pray that light may shine
+into his soul. It would be delightful to see the peace of God shining
+in that pale, stern face.
+
+MARCH 28.-It is almost six months since I wrote that. About the
+middle of October father had one of his ill turns one night, and we
+were all called up. He asked for me particularly, and Ernest came for
+me at last. He was a good deal agitated, and would not stop to half
+dress myself, and as I had a slight cold already, I suppose I added
+to it then. At any rate I was taken very sick, and the worst cough
+ever had has racked my poor frame almost to pieces. Nearly six months
+confinement to my room; six months of uselessness during which I have
+been a mere cumberer of the ground. Poor Ernest! What a hard time he
+has had! Instead of the cheerful welcome home I was to give him
+whenever he entered the house, here I have lain exhausted, woe-begone
+and good for nothing. It is the bitterest disappointment I
+ever had. My ambition is to be the sweetest, brightest, best of
+wives; and what with my childish follies, and my sickness, what a
+weary life my dear husband has had! But how often I have prayed that
+God would do His will in defiance, if need be, of mine! I have tried
+to remind myself of that every day. But I am too tired to write any
+more now.
+
+MARCH 30.-This experience of suffering has filled my mind with new
+thoughts. At one time I was so sick that Ernest sent for mother. Poor
+mother, she had to sleep with Martha. It was a great comfort to have
+her here, but I knew by her coming how sick I was, and then I began
+to ponder the question whether I was ready to die. Death looked to me
+as a most solemn, momentous event-but there was something very
+pleasant in the thought of being no longer a sinner, but a redeemed
+saint, and of dwelling forever in Christ's presence. Father came to
+see me when I had just reached this point.
+
+"My dear daughter," he asked, "are you prepared to face the Judge of
+all the earth?"
+
+"No, dear father," I said, "Christ will do that for me."
+
+"Have you no misgivings?"
+
+I could only smile; I had no strength to talk.
+
+Then I heard Ernest--my dear, calm, self-controlled Ernest--burst out
+crying and rush out of the room. I looked after him, and how I loved
+him! But I felt that I loved my Saviour infinitely more, and that if
+He now let me come home to be with Him I could trust Him to be a
+thousand-fold more to Ernest than I could ever be, and to take care
+of my darling baby and my precious mother far better than I could.
+The very gates of heaven seemed open to let me in. And then they were
+suddenly shut in my face, and I found myself a poor, weak, tempted
+creature here upon earth. I, who fancied myself an heir of glory, was
+nothing but a peevish, human creature-very human indeed, overcome if
+Martha shook the bed, as she always did, irritated if my food did not
+come at the right moment, or was not of the right sort, hurt and
+offended if Ernest put on at one less anxious and tender than he had
+used when I was very ill, and-in short, my own poor faulty self once
+more. Oh, what fearful battles I fought for patience, forbearance and
+unselfishness! What sorrowful tears of shame I shed over hasty,
+impatient words and fretful tones! No wonder I longed to be gone
+where weakness should be swallowed up in strength, and sin give place
+to eternal perfection!
+
+But here I am, and suffering and work lie before me, for which I feel
+little physical or mental courage. But "blessed be the will of God."
+
+APRIL 5.-I was alone with father last evening, Ernest and Martha both
+being out, and soon saw by the way he fidgeted in his chair that he
+had something on his mind. So I laid down the book I was reading, and
+asked him what it was.
+
+"My daughter," he began, "can you bear a plain word from an old man?"
+
+I felt frightened, for I knew I had been impatient to Martha of late,
+in spite of all my efforts to the contrary. I am still so miserably
+unwell.
+
+"I have seen many death-beds," he went on; "but I never saw one where
+there was not some dread of the King of Terrors exhibited; nor one
+where there was such absolute certainty of having found favor with
+God to make the hour of departure entirely free from such doubts and
+such humility as becomes a guilty sinner about to face his Judge."
+
+"I never saw such a one, either," I replied; "but ere have been many
+such deaths, and I hardly know of any scene that so honors and
+magnifies the Lord."
+
+"Yes," he said, slowly; "but they were old, mature, ripened
+Christians."
+
+"Not always old, dear father. Let me describe to you a scene Ernest
+described to me only yesterday."
+
+He waved his hand in token that this would delay his coming to the
+point he was aiming at.
+
+"To speak plainly," he said, "I feel uneasy about you, my daughter.
+You are young and in the bloom of life, but when death seemed staring
+you in the face, you expressed no anxiety, asked for no counsel,
+showed no alarm. It must be pleasant to possess so comfortable a
+persuasion of our acceptance with God; but is it safe to rest on such
+an assurance while we know that the human heart is deceitful above
+all things and desperately wicked?"
+
+"I thank you for the suggestion;" I said; "and, dear father, do not be
+afraid to speak still more plainly. You live in the house with me,
+see all my shortcomings and my faults, and I cannot wonder that you
+think me a poor, weak Christian. But do you really fear that I am
+deceived in believing that notwithstanding this I do really love my
+God and Saviour and am His Child?"
+
+"No," he said, hesitating a little, "I can't say that, exactly--I
+can't say that."
+
+This hesitation distressed me. At first it seemed to me that my life
+must have uttered a very uncertain sound if those who saw it could
+misunderstand its language. But then I reflected that it was, at
+best, a very faulty life, and that its springs of action were not
+necessarily seen by lookers-on.
+
+Father saw my distress and perplexity, and seemed touched by them.
+
+Just then Ernest came in with Martha, but seeing that something was
+amiss, the latter took herself off to her room, which I thought
+really kind of her.
+
+"What is it, father? What is it, Katy?" asked Ernest; looking from
+one troubled face to the other.
+
+I tried to explain.
+
+"I think, father, you may safely trust my wife's spiritual interests
+to me," Ernest said, with warmth. "You do not understand her. I do.
+Because there is nothing morbid about her, because she has a sweet,
+cheerful confidence in Christ; you doubt and misjudge her. You may
+depend upon it that people are individual in their piety as in other
+things, and cannot all be run in one mould. Katy has a playful way of
+speaking, I know, and often expresses her strongest feelings with
+what seems like levity, and is, perhaps, a little reckless about
+being misunderstood in consequence."
+
+He smiled on me, as he thus took up the cudgels in my defence, and I
+never felt so grateful to him in my life. The truth is, I hate
+sentimentalism so cordially, and have besides such an instinct to
+conceal my deepest, most sacred emotions, that I do not wonder people
+misunderstand and misjudge me.
+
+"I did not refer to her playfulness," father returned. "Old people
+must make allowances for the young; they must make allowances. What
+pains me is that this child, full of life and gayety as she is, sees
+death approach without that becoming awe and terror which befits
+mortal man."
+
+Ernest was going to reply, but I broke in eagerly upon his answer:
+
+"It is true that I expressed no anxiety when I believed death to be
+at hand. I felt none. I had given myself away to Christ, and He had
+received me and why should I be afraid to take His hand and go where
+He led me? And it is true that I asked for no counsel. I was too weak
+to ask questions or to like to have questions asked; but my mind was
+bright and wide awake while my body was so feeble, and I took counsel
+of God. Oh, let me read to you two passages from the life of Caroline
+Fry which will make you understand how a poor sinner looks upon
+death. The first is an extract from a letter written after learning
+that her days on earth were numbered.
+
+"As many will hear and will not understand, why I want no time of,
+preparation, often desired by far holier ones than I, I tell you why,
+and shall tell others, and so shall you. It is not because I am so
+holy but because I am so sinful. The peculiar character of my
+religious experience has always been a deep, an agonizing sense of
+sin; the sin of yesterday, of to-day, confessed with anguish hard to
+be endured, and cried for pardon that could not be unheard; each day
+cleansed anew in Jesus' blood, and each day more and more hateful in
+my own sight; what can I do in death I have not done in life? What,
+do in this week, when I am told I cannot live, other than I did last
+week, when knew it not? Alas, there is but one thing undone, to serve
+Him better; and the death-bed is no place for that. Therefore I say,
+if I am not ready now, I shall not be by delay, so far as I have to
+do with it. If He has more to do in me that is His part. I need not
+ask Him not to spoil His work by too much haste."
+
+"And these were her dying words, a few days later:
+
+"This is my bridal-day, the beginning of my life. I wish there
+should be no mistake about the reason of my desire to depart and to
+be with Christ. I confess myself the vilest, chiefest of sinners, and
+I desire to go to Him that I may be rid of the burden of sin-the sin
+of my nature-not the past, repented of every day, but the present,
+hourly, momentary sin, which I do commit, or may commit-the sense of
+which at times drives me half mad with grief!"
+
+I shall never forget the expression of father's face, as I finished
+reading these remarkable words. He rose slowly from his seat, and
+came and kissed me on the forehead. Then he left the room, but
+returned with a large volume, and pointing to a blank page, requested
+me to copy them there. He com plains that I do not write legibly, so
+I printed them as plainly as I could, with my pen.
+
+JUNE 20.-On the first of May, there came to us, with other spring
+flowers, our little fair-haired, blue-eyed daughter. How rich I felt
+when I heard Ernest's voice, as he replied to a question asked at the
+door, proclaim, "Mother and children all well." To think that we, who
+thought ourselves rich before are made so much richer now!
+
+But she is not large and vigorous, as little Ernest was, and we
+cannot rejoice in her without some misgiving. Yet her very frailty
+makes her precious to us. Little Ernest hangs over her with an almost
+lover-like pride and devotion, and should she live I can imagine what
+a protector he will be for her. I have had to give up the care of him
+to Martha. During my illness I do not know what would have become of
+him but for her. One of the pleasant events of every day at that
+time, was her bringing him to me in such exquisite order, his face
+shining with health and happiness, his hair and dress so beautifully
+neat and clean. Now that she has the care of him, she has become very
+fond of him, and he certainly forms one bond of union between us, for
+we both agree that he is the handsomest, best, most remarkable child
+that ever lived, or ever will live.
+
+JULY 6.-I have come home to dear mother with both my children. Ernest
+says our only hope for baby is to keep her out of the city during the
+summer months.
+
+What a petite wee maiden she is! Where does all the love come from?
+If I had had her always I do not see how I could be more fond of her.
+And do people call it living who never had any children?
+
+JULY 10.-If this darling baby lives, I shall always believe it is
+owing to my mother's prayers.
+
+I find little Ernest has a passionate temper, and a good deal of
+self-will. But he has fine qualities. I wish he had a better mother.
+I am so impatient with him when he is wayward and perverse! What he
+needs is a firm, gentle hand, moved by no caprice, and controlled by
+the constant fear of God. He never ought to hear an irritable word,
+or a sharp tone; but he does hear them, I must own with grief and
+shame. The truth is, it is so long since I really felt strong and
+well that I am not myself, and can not do him justice, poor child.
+Next to being a perfect wife I want to be a perfect mother. How
+mortifying, how dreadful in all things to come short of even one's
+own standard. What approach, then, does one make to God's standard?
+
+Mother seems very happy to have us here, though we make so much
+trouble. She encourages me in all my attempts to control myself and
+to control my dear little boy, and the chapters she gives me out of
+her own experience are as interesting as a novel, and a good deal
+more instructive.
+
+AUGUST.-Dear Ernest has come to spend a week with us. He is all tired
+out, as there has been a great deal of sickness in the city, and
+father has had quite a serious attack. He brought with him a nurse
+for baby, as one more desperate effort to strengthen her
+constitution.
+
+I reproached him for doing it without consulting me, but he said
+mother bad written to tell him that I was all worn out and not in a
+state to have the care of the children. It has been a terrible blow
+to me. One by one I am giving up the sweetest maternal duties. God
+means that I shall be nothing and do nothing; a mere useless
+sufferer. But when I tell Ernest so, he says I am everything to him,
+and that God's children please him just as well when they sit
+patiently with folded hands, if that is His will, as when they are
+hard at work. But to be at work, to be useful, to be necessary to my
+husband and children, is just what I want, and I do find it hard to
+be set against the wall, as it were, like an old piece of furniture
+no longer of any service I see now that my first desire has not been
+to please God, but to please myself, for I am restless under His
+restraining hand, and find my prison a very narrow one. I would be
+willing to bear any other trial, if I could only have health and
+strength for my beloved ones. I pray for patience with bitter tears.
+
+
+
+Chapter 16
+
+XVI.
+
+OCTOBER.
+
+WE are all at home together once more. The parting with mother was
+very painful. Every year that she lives now increases her loneliness,
+and makes me long to give her the shelter of my home. But in the
+midst of these anxieties, how much I have to make me happy! Little
+Ernest is the life and soul of the house; the sound of his feet
+pattering about, and all his prattle, are the sweetest music to my
+ear; and his heart is brimful of love and joy, so that he shines on
+us all like a sunbeam. Baby is improving every day, and is one of
+those tender, clinging little things that appeal to everybody's love
+and sympathy. I never saw a more angelic face than hers. Father sits
+by the hour looking at her. To-day he said:
+
+"Daughter Katherine, this lovely little one is not meant for this
+sinful world."
+
+"This world needs to be adorned with lovely little ones," I said.
+"And baby was never so well as she is now."
+
+"Do not set your heart too fondly upon her," he returned. "I feel
+that she is far too dear to me."
+
+"But, father, we could give her to God if He should ask for her
+Surely, we love Him better than we love her."
+
+But as I spoke a sharp pang shot through and through my soul, and I
+held my little fair daughter closely in my arms, as if I could always
+keep her there. It may be my conceit, but it really does seem as if
+poor father was getting a little fond of me. Ever since my own
+sickness I have felt great sympathy for him, and he feels, no doubt,
+that I give him something that neither Ernest nor Martha can do,
+since they were never sick one day in their lives. I do wish he could
+look more at Christ and at what He has done and is doing for us. The
+way of salvation is to me a wide path, absolutely radiant with the
+glory of Him who shines upon it; I see my shortcomings; I see my
+sins, but I feel myself bathed, as it were, in the effulgent glow
+that proceeds directly from the throne of God and the Lamb. It seems
+as if I ought to have some misgivings about my salvation, but I can
+hardly say that I have one. How strange, how mysterious that is! And
+here is father, so much older, so much better than I am, creeping
+along in the dark! I spoke to Ernest about it. He says I owe it to my
+training, in a great measure, and that my mother is fifty years in
+advance of her age. But it can't be all that. It was only after years
+of struggle and prayer that God gave me this joy.
+
+NOVEMBER 24.-Ernest asked me yesterday if I knew that Amelia and her
+husband had come here to live, and that she was very ill.
+
+"I wish you would go to see her, dear," he added. "She is a stranger
+here, and in great need of a friend." I felt extremely disturbed. I
+have lost my old affection for her, and the idea of meeting her
+husband was unpleasant.
+
+"Is she very sick?" I asked.
+
+"Yes. She is completely broken down. I promised her that you should
+go to see her."
+
+"Are you attending her?"
+
+"Yes; her husband came for me himself."
+
+"I don't want to go," I said. "It will be very disagreeable."
+
+"Yes, dear, I know it. But she needs a friend, as I said before."
+
+I put on my things very reluctantly, and went. I found Amelia in a
+richly-furnished house, but looking untidy and ill-cared-for. She was
+lying on a couch in her bedroom; three delicate-looking children were
+playing about, and their nurse sat sewing at the window.
+
+A terrible fit of coughing made it impossible for her to speak for
+some moments. At last she recovered herself sufficiently to welcome
+me, by throwing her arms around me and bursting into tears.
+
+"Oh, Katy!" she cried, "should you have known me if we had met in
+the street? Don't you find me sadly altered?"
+
+"You are changed," I said, "but so am I."
+
+"Yes, you do not look strong. But then you never did. And you are as
+pretty as ever, while I--oh, Kate! do you remember what round, white
+arms I used to have? Look at them now!"
+
+And she drew up her sleeve, poor child. Just then I heard a step in
+the passage, and her husband sauntered into the room, smoking.
+
+"Do go away, Charles," she said impatiently. "You know how your
+cigar sets me coughing."
+
+He held out his hand to me with the easy, nonchalant air of one who
+is accustomed to success and popularity.
+
+I looked at him with an aversion I could not conceal. The few years
+since we met has changed him so completely that I almost shuddered at
+the sight of his already bloated face, and at the air that told of a
+life worse than wasted.
+
+"Do go away, Charles," Amelia repeated.
+
+He threw himself into a chair without paying the least attention to
+her, and still addressing himself to me again, said:
+
+"Upon my word, you are prettier than ever,"
+
+and--
+
+"I will come to see you at another time, Amelia," I said, putting on
+all the dignity I could condense in my small frame, and rising to
+take leave.
+
+"Don't go, Katy!" he cried, starting up, "don't go. I want to have a
+good talk about old times."
+
+Katy, indeed! How dared he? I came away burning with anger and
+mortification. Is it possible that I ever loved such a man? That to
+gratify that love I defied and grieved my dear mother through a whole
+year! Oh, from what hopeless misery God saved me, when He snatched me
+out of the depth of my folly!
+
+DECEMBER 1.-Ernest says I can go to see Amelia with safety now, as
+her husband has sprained his ankle, and keeps to his own room. So I
+am going. But, I am sure, I shall say something imprudent or unwise,
+and wish I could think it right to stay away. I hope God will go with
+me and teach me what words to speak.
+
+DEC. 2.-I found Amelia more unwell than on my first visit, and she
+received me again with tears.
+
+"How good you are to come so soon," she began. "I did not blame you
+for running off the other day; Charley's impertinence was shameful.
+He said, after you left, that he perceived you had not yet lost your
+quickness to take offence, but I know he felt that you showed a just
+displeasure, and nothing more."
+
+"No, I was really angry," I replied. "I find the road to perfection
+lies up-hill, and I slip back so often that sometimes I despair of
+ever reaching the top."
+
+"What does the doctor say about me?" she asked. "Does he think me
+very sick?"
+
+"I dare say he will tell you exactly what he thinks," I returned, "if
+you ask him. This is his rule with all his patients."
+
+"If I could get rid of this cough I should soon be myself again," she
+said. "Some days I feel quite bright and well. But if it were not for
+my poor little children, I should not care much how the thing ended.
+With the life Charley leads me, I haven't much to look forward to."
+
+"You forget that the children's nurse is in the room," I whispered.
+
+"Oh, I don't mind Charlotte. Charlotte knows he neglects me, don't
+you, Charlotte?"
+
+Charlotte was discreet enough to pretend not to hear this question,
+and Amelia went on:
+
+"It began very soon after we were married. He would go round with
+other girls exactly as he did before; then when I spoke about it he
+would just laugh in his easy, good-natured way, but pay no attention
+to my wishes. Then when I grew more in earnest he would say, that as
+long as he let me alone I ought to let him alone. I thought that when
+our first baby came that would sober him a little, but he wanted a
+boy and it turned out to be a girl. And my being unhappy and crying
+so much, made the poor thing fretful; it kept him awake at night, so
+he took another room. After that I saw him less than ever, though now
+and then he would have a little love-fit, when he would promise to be
+at home more and treat me with more consideration. We had two more
+little girls-twins; and then a boy. Charley seemed quite fond of him,
+and did certainly seem improved, though he was still out a great deal
+with a set of idle young men, smoking, drinking wine, and, I don't
+know what else. His uncle gave him too much money, and he had nothing
+to do but to spend it."
+
+"You must not tell me any more now," I said. "Wait till you are
+stronger."
+
+The nurse rose and gave her something which seemed to refresh her. I
+went to look at the little girls, who were all pretty, pale-faced
+creatures, very quiet and mature in their ways.
+
+"I am rested now," said Amelia, "and it does me good to talk to you,
+because I can see that you are sorry for me."
+
+"I am, indeed!" I cried.
+
+"When our little boy was three months old I took this terrible cold
+and began to cough. Charley at first remonstrated with me for
+coughing so much; he said it was a habit I had got, and that I ought
+to cure myself of it. Then the baby began to pine and pine, and the
+more it wasted the more I wasted. And at last it died."
+
+Here the poor child burst out again, and I wiped away her tears as
+fast as they fell, thankful that she could cry.
+
+"After that," she went on, after awhile, "Charley seemed to lose his
+last particle of affection for me; he kept away more than ever, and
+once when I besought him not to neglect me and my children so, he
+said he was well paid for not keeping up his engagement with you,
+that you had some strength of character, and-"
+
+"Amelia," I interrupted, "do not repeat such things. They only pain
+and mortify me."
+
+"Well," she sighed, wearily, "this is what he has at last brought me
+to. I am sick and broken-hearted, and care very little what becomes
+of me."
+
+There was a long silence. I wanted to ask her if, when earthly refuge
+failed her, she could not find shelter in the love of Christ. But I
+have what is, I fear, a morbid terror of seeking the confidence of
+others. I knelt down at last, and kissed the poor faded face.
+
+"Yes, I knew you would feel for me," she said. "The only pleasant
+thought I had when Charley insisted on coming here to live was, that
+I should see you."
+
+"Does your uncle live here, too?" I asked.
+
+"Yes, he came first, and it was that that put it into Charley's head
+to come. He is very kind to me."
+
+"Yes," I said, "and God is kind, too, isn't He?"
+
+"Kind to let me get sick and disgust Charley? Now, Katy, how can you
+talk so?" I replied by repeating two lines from a hymn of which I am
+very fond:
+
+    'O Saviour, whose mercy severe in its kindness,
+    Hath chastened my wanderings, and guided my way.'
+
+"I don't much care for hymns," she said. "When one is well, and
+everything goes quite to one's mind, it is nice to go to church and
+sing with the rest of them. But, sick as I am, it isn't so easy to be
+religious."
+
+"But isn't this the very time to look to Christ for comfort?"
+
+"What's the use of looking anywhere for comfort?" she said,
+peevishly. "Wait till you are sick and heart-broken yourself, and
+you'll see that you won't feel much like doing anything but just
+groan and cry your life out."
+
+"I have been sick, and I know what sorrow means," I said. "And I am
+glad that I do. For I have learned Christ in that school, and I know
+that He can comfort when no one else can."
+
+"You always were an odd creature," she replied. "I never pretended to
+understand half you said."
+
+I saw that she was tired, and came away. Oh, how I wished that I had
+been able to make Christ look to her as He did to me all the way
+home.
+
+DEC. 24.-Father says he does not like Dr. Cabot's preaching. He
+thinks that it is not doctrinal enough, and that he does not preach
+enough to sinners. But I can see that it has influenced him already,
+and that he is beginning to think of God, as manifested in Christ,
+far more than he used to do. With me he has endless discussions on
+his and my favorite subjects, and though I can never tell along what
+path I walked to reach a certain conclusion, the earnestness of my
+convictions does impress him strangely. I am sure there is a great
+deal of conceit mixed up with all I say, and then when I compare my
+life with my own standard of duty, I wonder I ever dare to open my
+mouth and undertake to help others.
+
+Baby is not at all well. To see a little frail, tender thing really
+suffering, tears my soul to pieces. I think it would distress me less
+to give her to God just as she is now, a vital part of my very heart,
+than to see her live a mere invalid life. But I try to feel, as I
+know I say, Thy will be done! Little Ernest is the very picture of
+health and beauty. He has vitality enough for two children. He and his
+little sister will make very interesting contrasts as they grow
+older. His ardor and vivacity will rouse her, and her gentleness will
+soften him.
+
+JAN. 1, 1841.-Every day brings its own duty and its own discipline.
+How is it that I make such slow progress while this is the case? It
+is a marvel to me why God allows characters like mine to defile His
+church. I can only account for it with the thought that if I ever am
+perfected, I shall be a great honor to His name, for surely worse
+material for building up a temple of the Holy Ghost was never
+gathered together before. The time may come when those who know me
+now, crude, childish, incomplete, will look upon me with amazement,
+saying, "What hath God wrought!" If I knew such a time would never
+come, I should want to flee into the holes and caves of the earth.
+
+I have everything to inspire me to devotion. My dear mother's
+influence is always upon me. To her I owe the habit of flying to God
+in every emergency, and of believing in prayer. Then I am in close
+fellowship with a true man and a true Christian. Ernest has none of
+my fluctuations; he is always calm and self-possessed. This is partly
+his natural character; but he has studied the Bible more than any
+other book, his convictions of duty are fixed because they are drawn
+thence, and his constant contact with the sick and the suffering has
+revealed life to him just as it is. How he has helped me on! God
+bless him for it!
+
+Then I have James. To be with him one half hour is an inspiration. He
+lives in such blessed communion with Christ that he is in perpetual
+sunshine, and his happiness fertilizes even this disordered household;
+there is not a soul in it that does not catch somewhat of his
+joyousness.
+
+And there are my children! My darling, precious children! For their
+sakes I am continually constrained to seek after an amended, a
+sanctified life; what I want them to become I must become myself.
+
+So I enter on a new year, not knowing what it will bring forth, but
+surely with a thousand reasons for thanksgiving, for joy, and for
+hope.
+
+JAN. 16.-One more desperate effort to make harmony out of the
+discords of my house, and one more failure. Ernest forgot that it was
+our wedding-day, which mortified and pained me, especially as he had
+made an engagement to dine out. I am always expecting something from
+life that I never get. Is it so with everybody? I am very uneasy,
+too, about James. He seems to be growing fond of Lucy's society. I am
+perfectly sure that she could not make him happy. Is it possible that
+he does not know what a brilliant young man he is, and that he can
+have whom he pleases? It is easy, in theory, to let God plan our own
+destiny, and that of our friends. But when it comes to a specific
+case we fancy we can help His judgments with our poor reason. Well, I
+must go to Him with this new anxiety, and trust my darling brother's
+future to Him, if I can.
+
+I shall try to win James' confidence. If it is not Lucy, who or what
+is it that is making him so thoughtful and serious, yet so wondrously
+happy?
+
+JAN. 17.-I have been trying to find out whether this is a mere notion
+of mine about Lucy. James laughs, and evades my questions. But he
+owns that a very serious matter is occupying his thoughts, of which
+he does not wish to speak at present. May God bless him in it,
+whatever it is.
+
+MAY 1.-My delicate little Una's first birthday. Thank God for sparing
+her to us a year. If He should take her away I should still rejoice
+that this life was mingled with ours, and has influenced them. Yes,
+even an unconscious infant is an ever-felt influence in the
+household; what an amazing thought!
+
+I have given this precious little one away to her Saviour and to
+mine; living or dying, she is His.
+
+DEC. 13.-Writing journals does not seem to be my mission on earth of
+late. My busy hands find so much else to do. And sometimes when I have
+been particularly exasperated and tried by the jarring elements that
+form my home, I have not dared to indulge myself with recording
+things that ought to be forgotten.
+
+How I long to live in peace with all men, and how I resent
+interference in the management of my children! If the time ever comes
+that I live, a spinster of a certain age, in the family of an elder
+brother, what a model of forbearance, charity, and sisterly
+loving-kindness I shall be!
+
+
+
+Chapter 17
+
+XVII.
+
+JANUARY 1, 1842
+
+I MEAN to resume my journal, and be more faithful to it this year.
+How many precious things, said by dear Mrs. Campbell and others, are
+lost forever, because I did not record them at the time!
+
+I have seen her to-day. At Ernest's suggestion I have let Susan Green
+provide her with a comfortable chair which enables her to sit up
+during a part of each day. I found her in it, full of gratitude, her
+sweet, tranquil face shining, as it always is, with a light reflected
+from heaven itself. She looks like one who has had her struggle with
+life and conquered it. During last year I visited her often and
+gradually learned much of her past history, though she does not love
+to talk of herself. She has outlived her husband, a houseful of girls
+and her ill-health is chiefly the result of years of watching by
+their sick-beds, and grief at their loss.
+
+For she does not pretend not to grieve, but always says, "It is
+repining that dishonors God, not grief."
+
+I said to her to-day:
+
+"Doesn't it seem hard when you think of the many happy homes there
+are in the world, that you should be singled out for such bereavement
+and loneliness?"
+
+She replied, with a smile:
+
+"I am not singled out, dear. There are thousands of God's own dear
+children, scattered over the world, suffering far more than I do. And
+I do not think there are many persons in it who are happier than I
+am. I was bound to my God and Saviour before I knew a sorrow, it is
+true. But it was by a chain of many links; and every link that
+dropped away, brought me to Him, till at last, having nothing left, I
+was shut up to Him, and learned fully, what I had only learned
+partially, how soul-satisfying He is."
+
+"You think, then," I said, while my heart died within me, "that
+husband and children are obstacles in our way, and hinder our getting
+near to Christ."
+
+"Oh, no!" she cried. "God never gives us hindrances. On the contrary,
+He means, in making us wives and mothers, to put us into the very
+conditions of holy living. But if we abuse His gifts by letting them
+take His place in our hearts, it is an act of love on His part to
+take them away, or to destroy our pleasure in them. It is
+delightful," she added, after a pause, "to know that there are some
+generous souls on earth, who love their dear ones with all their
+hearts, yet give those hearts unreservedly to Christ. Mine was not
+one of them."
+
+I had some little service to render her which interrupted our
+conversation. The offices I have had to have rendered me in my own
+long days of sickness have taught me to be less fastidious about
+waiting upon others. I am thankful that God has at last made me
+willing to do anything in a sick-room that must be done. She thanked
+me, as she always does, and then I said:
+
+"I have a great many little trials, but they don't do me a bit of
+good. Or, at least, I don't see that they do."
+
+"No, we never see plants growing," she said.
+
+"And do you really think then, that perhaps I am growing, though
+unconsciously?"
+
+"I know you are, dear child. There can't be life without growth."
+
+This comforted me. I came home, praying all the way, and striving to
+commit myself entirely to Him in whose school I sit as learner. Oh,
+that I were a better scholar. But I do not half learn my lessons, I am
+heedless and inattentive, and I forget what is taught. Perhaps this
+is the reason that weighty truths float before my mind's eye at
+times, but do not fix themselves there.
+
+MARCH 20.-I have been much impressed by Dr. Cabot's sermons to-day.
+while I am listening to his voice and hear him speak of the beauty
+and desirableness of the Christian life, I feel as he feels, that I
+am waiting to count all things but dross that I may win Christ. But
+when I come home to my worldly cares, I get completely absorbed in
+them, it is only by a painful wrench that I force my soul back to
+God. Sometimes I almost envy Lucy her calm nature, which gives her so
+little trouble. Why need I throw my whole soul into whatever I do?
+Why can't I make so much as an apron for little Ernest without the
+ardor and eagerness of a soldier marching to battle? I wonder if
+people of my temperament ever get toned down, and learn to take life
+coolly?
+
+JUNE 10.-My dear little Una has had a long and very severe illness.
+It seems wonderful that she could survive such sufferings. And it is
+almost as wonderful that I could look upon them, week after week,
+without losing my senses.
+
+At first Ernest paid little attention to my repeated entreaties that
+he would prescribe for her, and some precious time was thus lost. But
+the moment he was fully aroused to see her danger, there was
+something beautiful in his devotion. He often walked the room with
+her by the hour together, and it was touching to see her lying like a
+pale; crushed lily in his strong arms. One morning she seemed almost
+gone, and we knelt around her with bursting hearts, to commend her
+parting soul to Him in whose arms we were about to place her. But it
+seemed as if all He asked of us was to come to that point, for then
+He gave her back to us, and she is still ours, only seven-fold
+dearer. I was so thankful to see dear Ernest's faith triumphing over
+his heart, and making him so ready to give up even this little lamb
+without a word. Yes, we will give our children to Him if he asks for
+them. He shall never have to snatch them from us by force.
+
+OCT. 4.-We have had a quiet summer in the country, that is, I have
+with my darling little ones. This is the fourth birthday of our son
+and heir, and he has been full of health and vivacity, enjoying
+everything with all his heart. How he lights up our sombre household
+! Father has been fasting to-day, and is so worn out and so nervous
+in consequence, that he could not bear the sound of the children's
+voices. I wish, if he must fast, he would do it moderately, and do it
+all the time. Now he goes without food until he is ready to sink, and
+now he eats quantities of improper food. If Martha could only see how
+mischievous all this is for him. After the children had been hustled
+out of the way, and I had got them both off to bed, he said in his
+most doleful manner, "I hope, my daughter, that you are faithful to
+your son. He has now reached the age of four years, and is a
+remarkably intelligent child. I hope you teach him that he is a
+sinner, and that he is in a state of condemnation."
+
+"Now, father, don't," I said. "You are all tired out, and do not know
+what you are saying. I would not have little Ernest hear you for the
+world."
+
+Poor father! He fairly groaned.
+
+"You are responsible for that child's soul;" he said; "you have more
+influence over him than all the world beside."
+
+"I know it," I said, "and sometimes I feel ready to sink when I think
+of the great work God has intrusted to me. But my poor child will
+learn that he is a sinner only too soon, and before that dreadful day
+arrives I want to fortify his soul with the only antidote against the
+misery that knowledge will give him. I want him to see his Redeemer
+in all His love, and all His beauty, and to love Him with all his
+heart and soul, and mind and strength. Dear father, pray for him, and
+pray for me, too."
+
+"I do, I will," he said, solemnly. And then followed the inevitable
+long fit of silent musing, when I often wonder what is passing in
+that suffering soul. For a sufferer he certainly is who sees a great
+and good and terrible God who cannot look upon iniquity, and does not
+see His risen Son, who has paid the debt we owe, and lives to
+intercede for us before the throne of the Father.
+
+JAN. 1, 1842.-James came to me yesterday with a letter he had been
+writing to mother.
+
+"I want you to read this before it goes," he said, "for you ought to
+know my plans as soon as mother does."
+
+I did not get time to read it till after tea. Then I came up here to
+my room, and sat down curious to know what was coming.
+
+Well, I thought I loved him as much as one human being could love
+another, already, but now my heart embraced him with a fervor and
+delight that made me so happy that I could not speak a word when I
+knelt down to tell my Saviour all about it.
+
+He said that he had been led, within a few months, to make a new
+consecration of himself to Christ and to Christ's cause on earth, and
+that this had resulted in his choosing the life of a missionary,
+instead of settling down, as he had intended to do, as a city
+physician. Such expressions of personal love to Christ, and delight
+in the thought of serving Him, I never read. I could only marvel at
+what God had wrought in his soul. For me to live to Christ seems
+natural enough, for I have been driven to Him not only by sorrow but
+by sin. Every outbreak of my hasty temper sends me weeping and
+penitent to the foot of the cross, and I love much because I have
+been forgiven much. But James, as far as I know, has never had a
+sorrow, except my father's death, and that had no apparent religious
+effect. And his natural character is perfectly beautiful. He is as
+warm-hearted and loving and simple and guileless as a child, and has
+nothing of my intemperance, hastiness and quick temper. I have often
+thought that she would be a rare woman who could win and wear such a
+heart as his. Life has done little but smile upon him; he is handsome
+and talented and attractive; everybody is fascinated by him,
+everybody caresses him; and yet he has turned his back on the world
+that has dealt so kindly with him, and given himself, as Edwards
+says, "clean away to Christ!" Oh, how thankful I am! And yet to let
+him go! My only brother-mother's Son! But I know what she will say;
+she will him God-speed!
+
+Ernest came upstairs, looking tired and jaded. I read the letter to
+him. It impressed him strangely: but he only said,
+
+"This is what we might expect, who knew James, dear fellow!"
+
+But when we knelt down to pray together, I saw how he was touched,
+and how his soul kindled within him in harmony with that consecrated,
+devoted spirit. Dear James! it must be mother's prayers that have
+done for him this wondrous work that is usually the slow growth of
+years; and this is the mother who prays for you, Katy! So take
+courage!
+
+JAN. 2.-James means to study theology as well as medicine, it seems.
+That will keep him with us for some years. Oh, is it selfish to take
+this view of it? Alas, the spirit is willing to have him go, but the
+flesh is weak, and cries out.
+
+OCT. 22.-Amelia came to see me to-day. She has been traveling, for
+her health, and certainly looks much improved.
+
+"Charley and I are quite good friends again," she began. "We have
+jaunted about everywhere, and have a delightful time. What a snug
+little box of a house you have!"
+
+"It is inconveniently small," I said, "for our family is large and the
+doctor needs more office room."
+
+"Does he receive patients here? How horrid! Don't you hate to have
+people with all sorts of ills and aches in the house? It must depress
+your spirits."
+
+"I dare say it would if I saw them; but I never do."
+
+"I should like to see your children. Your husband says you are
+perfectly devoted to them."
+
+"As I suppose all mothers are," I replied, laughing.
+
+"As to that," she returned, "people differ."
+
+The children were brought down. She admired little Ernest, as
+everybody does, but only glanced at the baby.
+
+"What a sickly-looking little thing!" she said. "But this boy is a
+splendid fellow! Ah, if mine had lived he would have been just such a
+child! But some people have all the trouble and others all the
+comfort. I am, sure I don't know what I have done that I should have
+to lose my only boy, and have nothing left but girls. To be sure, I
+can afford to dress them elegantly, and as soon as they get old
+enough I mean to have them taught all sorts of accomplishments. You
+can't imagine what a relief it is to have plenty of money!"
+
+"Indeed I can't!" I said; "it is quite beyond the reach of my
+imagination."
+
+"My uncle--that is to say Charley's uncle-has just given me a
+carriage and horses for my own use. In fact, he heaps everything upon
+me. Where do you go to church?"
+
+I told her, reminding her that Dr. Cabot was its pastor.
+
+"Oh, I forgot! Poor Dr. Cabot! Is he as old-fashioned as ever?"
+
+"I don't know what you mean," I cried. "He is as good as ever, if not
+better. His health is very delicate, and that one thing seems to be a
+blessing to him."
+
+"A blessing! Why, Kate Mortimer! Kate Elliott, I mean. It is a
+blessing I, for one, am very willing to dispense with. But you always
+did say queer things. Well, I dare say Dr. Cabot is very good and all
+that, but his church is not a fashionable one, and Charley and I go
+to Dr. Bellamy's. That is, I go once a day, pretty regularly, and
+Charley goes when he feels like it. Good-by. I must go now; I have
+all my fall shopping to do. Have you done yours? Suppose you jump
+into the carriage and go with me? You can't imagine how it passes
+away the morning to drive from shop to shop looking over the new
+goods."
+
+"There seem to be a number of things I can't imagine," I replied,
+dryly. "You must excuse me this morning."
+
+She took her leave.. I looked at her rich dress as she gathered it
+about her and swept away, and recalled all her empty, frivolous talk
+with contempt.
+
+She and Ch---, her husband, I mean, are well matched. They need their
+money, and their palaces and their fine clothes and handsome
+equipages, for they have nothing else. How thankful I am that I am as
+unlike them as ex---
+
+OCTOBER 30.-I'm sure I don't know what I was going to say when I was
+interrupted just then. Something in the way of self-glorification,
+most likely. I remember the contempt with which I looked after Amelia
+as she left our house, and the pinnacle on which I sat perched for
+some days, when I compared my life with hers. Alas, it was my view of
+life of which I was lost in admiration, for I am sure that if I ever
+come under the complete dominion of Christ's gospel I shall not know
+the Sentiment of disdain. I feel truly ashamed and sorry that I am
+still so far from being penetrated with that spirit.
+
+My pride has had a terrible fall. As I sat on my throne, looking down
+on all the Amelias in the world, I felt a profound pity at their
+delight in petty trifles, their love of position, of mere worldly
+show and passing vanities.
+
+"They are all alike," I said to myself. "They are incapable of
+understanding a character like mine, or the exalted, ennobling
+principles that govern me. They crave the applause of this world,
+they are satisfied with fine clothes, fine houses, fine equipages.
+They think and talk of nothing else; I have not one idea in common
+with them. I see the emptiness and hollowness of these things. I am
+absolutely unworldly; my ambition is to attain whatever they, in
+their blind folly and ignorance, absolutely despise."
+
+Thus communing with myself, I was not a little pleased to hear Dr.
+Cabot and his wife announced. I hastened to meet them and to display
+to them the virtues I so admired in myself. They had hardly a chance
+to utter a word. I spoke eloquently of my contempt for worldly
+vanities, and of my enthusiastic longings for a higher life. I even
+went into particulars about the foibles of some of my acquaintances,
+though faint misgivings as to the propriety of such remarks on the
+absent made me half repent the words I still kept uttering. When they
+took leave I rushed to my room with my heart beating, my cheeks all
+in a glow, and caught up and caressed the children in a way that
+seemed to astonish them. Then I took my work and sat down to sew.
+What a horrible reaction now took place! I saw my refined, subtle,
+disgusting pride, just as I suppose Dr. and Mrs. Cabot saw it! I sat
+covered with confusion, shocked at myself, shocked at the weakness of
+human nature. Oh, to get back the good opinion of my friends! To
+recover my own self-respect! But this was impossible. I threw down my
+work and walked about my room. There was a terrible struggle in my
+soul. I saw that instead of brooding over the display I had made of
+myself to Dr. Cabot I ought to be thinking solely of my appearance in
+the sight of God, who could see far more plainly than any earthly eye
+could all my miserable pride and self-conceit. But I could not do
+that, and chafed about till I was worn out, body and soul. At last I
+sent the children away, and knelt down and told the whole story to
+Him who knew what I was when He had compassion on me, called me by my
+name, and made me His own child. And here, I found a certain peace.
+Christian, on his way to the celestial city, met and fought his
+Apollyons and his giants, too; but he got there at last!
+
+
+Chapter 18
+
+XVIII.
+
+NOVEMBER.
+
+THIS morning Ernest received an early summons to Amelia. I got out of
+all manner of patience with him because he would take his bath and
+eat his breakfast before he went, and should have driven any one else
+distracted by my hurry and flurry.
+
+"She has had a hemorrhage!" I cried. "Do, Ernest, make haste."
+
+"Of course," he returned, "that would come, sooner or later."
+
+"You don't mean," I said, "that she has been in danger of this all
+along?"
+
+"I certainly do."
+
+"Then it was very unkind in you not to tell me so."
+
+"I told you at the outset that her lungs were diseased."
+
+"No, you told me no such thing. Oh, Ernest, is she going to die?"
+
+"I did not know you were so fond of her," he said, apologetically.
+
+"It is not that," I cried. "I am distressed at the thought of the
+worldly life she has been living-at my never trying to influence her
+for her good. If she is in danger, you will tell her so? Promise me
+that."
+
+"I must see her before I make such a promise," he said, and went out.
+
+I flew up to my room and threw myself on my knees, sorrowful,
+self-condemned. I had thrown away my last opportunity of speaking a
+word to her in season, though I had seen how much she needed one, and
+now she was going to die! Oh, I hope God will forgive me, and hear
+the prayers I have offered her!
+
+EVENING.-Ernest says he had a most distressing scene at Amelia's this
+morning. She insisted on knowing what he thought of her, and then
+burst out bitter complaints and lamentations, charging it to husband
+that she had this disease, declaring that she could not, and would
+not die, and insisting that he must prevent it. Her uncle urged for a
+consultation of physicians, to which Ernest consented, of course,
+though he says no mortal power can save her now. I asked him how her
+husband appeared, to which he made the evasive answer that he
+appeared just as one would expect him to do.
+
+DECEMBER.-Amelia was so determined to see me that Ernest thought it
+best for me to go. I found her looking very feeble.
+
+"Oh, Katy," she began at once, "do make the doctor say that I shall
+get well!"
+
+"I wish he could say so with truth," I answered. "Dear Amelia, try
+to think how happy God's own children are when they are with Him."
+
+"I can't think," she replied. "I do not want to think. I want to
+forget all about it. If it were not for this terrible cough I could
+forget it, for I am really a great deal better than I was a month
+ago."
+
+I did not know what to say or what to do.
+
+"May I read a hymn or a few verses from the Bible?" I asked, at last.
+
+"Just as you like," she said, indifferently.
+
+I read a verse now and then, but she looked tired, and I prepared to
+go.
+
+"Don't go," she cried. "I do not dare to be alone. Oh, what a
+terrible, terrible thing it is to die! To leave this bright,
+beautiful world, and be nailed in a coffin and buried up in a cold,
+dark grave."
+
+"Nay," I said, "to leave this poor sick body there, and to fly to a
+world ten thousand times brighter, more beautiful than this."
+
+"I had just got to feeling nearly well," she said, "and I had
+everything I wanted, and Charley was quite good to me, and I kept my
+little girls looking like fairies, just from fairy-land. Everybody
+said they wore the most picturesque costumes when they were dressed
+according to my taste. And I have got to go and leave them, and
+Charley will be marrying somebody else, and saying to her all the
+nice things he has said to me."
+
+"I really must go now," I said. "You are wearing yourself all out."
+
+"I declare you are crying," she exclaimed. "You do pity me after
+all."
+
+"Indeed I do," I said, and came away, heartsick.
+
+Ernest says there is nothing I can do for her now but to pray for
+her, since she does not really believe herself in danger, and has a
+vague feeling that if she can once convince him how much she wants to
+live, he will use some vigorous measures to restore her. Martha is to
+watch with her to-night. Ernest will not let me.
+
+JAN. 18, 1843.-Our wedding-day has passed unobserved. Amelia's
+suffering condition absorbs us all. Martha spends much time with her,
+and prepares almost all the food she eats.
+
+JAN. 20.-I have seen poor Amelia once more, and perhaps for the last
+time. She has failed rapidly of late, and Ernest says may drop away
+at almost any time.
+
+When I went in she took me by the hand, and with great difficulty,
+and at intervals said something like this:
+
+"I have made up my mind to it, and I know it must come. I want to see
+Dr. Cabot. Do you think he would be willing to visit me after my
+neglecting him so?"
+
+"I am sure he would," I cried.
+
+"I want to ask him if he thinks I was a Christian at that time-you
+know when. If I was, then I need not be so afraid to die."
+
+"But, dear Amelia, what he thinks is very little to the purpose. The
+question is not whether you ever gave yourself to God, but whether
+you are His now. But I ought not to talk to you. Dr. Cabot will know
+just what to say."
+
+"No, but I want to know what you thought about it."
+
+I felt distressed, as I looked at her wasted dying figure, to be
+called on to help decide such a question. But I knew what I ought to
+say, and said it:
+
+"Don't look back to the past; it is useless. Give yourself to Christ
+now."
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"I don't know how," she said. "Oh, Katy, pray to God to let me live
+long enough to get ready to die. I have led a worldly life. I shudder
+at the bare thought of dying; I must have time."
+
+"Don't wait for time," I said, with tears, "get ready now, this
+minute. A thousand years would not make you more fit to die."
+
+So I came away, weary and heavy-laden, and on the way home stopped
+to tell Dr. Cabot all about it, and by this time he is with her.
+
+MARCH 1.-Poor Amelia's short race on earth is over. Dr. Cabot saw
+her every few days and says he hopes she did depart in Christian
+faith, though without Christian joy. I have not seen her since that
+last interview. That excited me so that Ernest would not let me go
+again.
+
+Martha has been there nearly the whole time for three or four weeks,
+and I really think it has done her good. She seems less absorbed in
+mere outside things, and more lenient toward me and my failings.
+
+I do not know what is to become of those motherless little girls. I wish
+I could take them into my own home, but, of course, that is not even
+to be thought at this juncture. Ernest says their father seemed
+nearly distracted when Amelia died, and that his uncle is going to
+send him off to Europe immediately.
+
+I have been talking with Ernest about Amelia.
+
+"What do you think," I asked, "about her last days on earth? Was
+there really any preparation for death?"
+
+"These scenes are very painful," he returned. "Of course there is but
+one real preparation for Christian dying, and that is Christian
+living."
+
+"But the sick-room often does what a prosperous life never did!"
+
+"Not often. Sick persons delude themselves, or are deluded by their
+friends; they do not believe they are really about to die. Besides,
+they are bewildered and exhausted by disease, and what mental
+strength they have is occupied with studying symptoms, watching for
+the doctor, and the like. I do not now recall a single instance where
+a worldly Christian died a happy, joyful death, in all my practice."
+
+"Well, in one sense it makes no difference whether they die happily
+or not. The question is do they die in the Lord?"
+
+"It may make no vital difference to them, but we must not forget that
+God is honored or dishonored by the way a Christian dies, as well as
+by the way in which he lives. There is great significance in the
+description given in the Bible of the death by which John should
+'Glorify God'; to my mind it implies that to die well is to live well."
+
+"But how many thousands die suddenly, or of such exhausting disease
+that they cannot honor God by even one feeble word."
+
+"Of course, I do not, refer to such cases. All I ask is that those
+whose minds are clear, who are able to attend to all other final
+details, should let it be seen what the gospel of Christ can do for
+poor sinners in the great exigency of life, giving Him the glory. I
+can tell you, my darling, that standing, as I so often do, by dying
+beds, this whole subject has become one of great magnitude to my mind.
+And it gives me positive personal pain to see heirs of the eternal
+kingdom, made such by the ignominious death of their Lord, go
+shrinking and weeping to the full possession of their inheritance."
+
+Ernest is right, I am sure, but how shall the world, even the
+Christian world, be convinced that it may have blessed fortastes of
+heaven while yet plodding upon earth, and faith to go thither
+joyfully, for the simple asking?
+
+Poor Amelia! But she understands it all now. It is a blessed thing to
+have this great faith, and it is a blessed thing to have a Saviour
+who accepts it when it is but a mere grain of mustard-seed!
+
+MAY 24.-I celebrated my little Una's third birthday by presenting her
+with a new brother. Both the children welcomed him with delight that
+was itself compensation enough for all it cost me to get up such a
+celebration. Martha takes a most prosaic view of this proceeding, in
+which she detects malice prepense on my part. She says I shall now
+have one mouth the more to fill, and two feet the more to shoe; more
+disturbed nights, more laborious days, and less leisure for visiting,
+reading, music, and drawing.
+
+Well! this is one side of the story, to be sure, but I look at the
+other. Here is a sweet, fragrant mouth to kiss; here are two more
+feet to make music with their pattering about my nursery. Here is a
+soul to train for God, and the body in which it dwells is worthy all
+it will cost, since it is the abode of a kingly tenant. I may see
+less of friends, but I have gained one dearer than them all, to whom,
+while I minister in Christ's name, I make a willing sacrifice of what
+little leisure for my own recreation my other darlings had left me.
+Yes, my precious baby, you are welcome to your mother's heart,
+welcome to her time, her strength, her health, her tenderest cares,
+to her life-long prayers! Oh, how rich I am, how truly, how
+wondrously blest!
+
+JUNE 5.-We begin to be woefully crowded. We need a larger house, or a
+smaller household. I am afraid I secretly, down at the bottom of my
+heart, wish Martha and her father could give place to my little ones.
+May God forgive me if this is so! It is a poor time for such emotions
+when He has just given me another darling child, for whom I have as
+rich and ample a love as if I had spent no affection on the other
+twain. I have made myself especially kind to poor father and to
+Martha lest they should perceive how inconvenient it is to have them
+here, and be pained by it. I would not for the world despoil them of
+what little satisfaction they may derive from living with us. But,
+oh! I am so selfish, and it is so hard to practice the very law of
+love I preach to my children! Yet I want this law to rule and reign
+in my home, that it may be a little heaven below, and I will not, no,
+I will not, cease praying that it may be such, no matter what it
+costs me. Poor father! poor old man! I will try to make your home so
+sweet and home-like to you that when you change it for heaven it
+shall be but a transition from one bliss to a higher!
+
+EVENING.-Soon after writing that I went down to see father, whom I
+have had to neglect of late, baby has so used up both time and
+strength.. I found him and Martha engaged in what seemed to be an
+exciting debate, as Martha had a fiery little red spot on each cheek,
+and was knitting furiously. I was about to retreat, when she got up
+in a flurried way and went off, saying, as she went:
+
+"You tell her, father; I can't."
+
+I went up to him tenderly and took his hand. Ah, how gentle and
+loving we are when we have just been speaking to God!
+
+"What is it, dear father?" I asked; "is anything troubling you?"
+
+"She is going to be married," he replied.
+
+"Oh, father!" I cried, "how n-" nice, I was going to say, but stopped
+just in time.
+
+All my abominable selfishness that I thought I had left at my
+Master's feet ten minutes before now came trooping back in full
+force.
+
+"She's going to be married; she'll go away, and will take her father
+to live with her! I can have room for my children, and room for
+mother! Every element of discord will now leave my home, and Ernest
+will see what I really am!"
+
+These were the thoughts that rushed through my mind, and that
+illuminated my face.
+
+"Does Ernest know?" I asked.
+
+"Yes, Ernest has known it for some weeks."
+
+Then I felt injured and inwardly accused Ernest of unkindness in
+keeping so important a fact a secret. But when I went back to my
+children, vexation with him took flight at once. The coming of each
+new child strengthens and deepens my desire to be what I would have
+it become; makes my faults more odious in my eyes, and elevates my
+whole character. What a blessed discipline of joy and of pain my
+married life has been; how thankful I am to reap its fruits even
+while pricked by its thorns!
+
+JUNE 21.-It seems that the happy man who has wooed Martha and won her
+is no less a personage than old Mr. Underhill. His ideal of a woman
+is one who has no nerves, no sentiment, no backaches, no headaches,
+who will see that the wheels of his household machinery are kept well
+oiled, so that he need never hear them creak, and who, in addition to
+her other accomplishments, believes in him and will be kind enough to
+live forever for his private accommodation. This expose of his
+sentiments he has made to me in a loud, cheerful, pompous way, and he
+has also favored me with a description of his first wife, who lacked
+all these qualifications, and was obliging enough to depart in peace
+at an early stage of their married life, meekly preferring thus to
+make way for a worthier successor. Mr. Underhill with all his
+foibles, however, is on the whole a good man. He intends to take
+Amelia's little girls into his own home, and be a father, as Martha
+will be a mother, to them. For this reason he hurries on the
+marriage, after which they will all go at once to his country-seat,
+which is easy of access, and which he says he is sure father will
+enjoy. Poor old father I hope he will, but when the subject is
+alluded to he maintains a sombre silence, and it seems to me he never
+spent so many days alone in his room, brooding over his misery, as he
+has of late. Oh, that I could comfort him.
+
+JULY 12.-The marriage was appointed for the first of the month, as
+old Mr. Underhill wanted to get out of town before the Fourth. As the
+time drew near, Martha began to pack father's trunk as well as her
+own, and brush in and out of his room till he had no rest for the
+sole of his foot, and seemed as forlorn as a pelican in the
+wilderness.
+
+I know no more striking picture of desolation than that presented by
+one of these quaint birds, standing upon a single leg, feeling as the
+story has it, "den Jammer und das Elend der Welt."
+
+On the last evening in June we all sat together on the piazza,
+enjoying, each in our own way, a refreshing breeze that had sprung up
+after a sultry day. Father was quieter than usual, and seemed very
+languid. Ernest who, out of regard to Martha's last evening at home,
+had joined our little circle, observed this, and said, cheerfully:
+
+"You will feel better as soon as you are once more out of the city,
+father."
+
+Father made no reply for some minutes, and when he did speak we were
+all startled to find that his voice trembled as if he were shedding
+tears. We could not understand what he said. I went to him and made
+him lean his head upon me as he often did when it ached. He took my
+hand in both his.
+
+"You do love the old man a little?" he asked, in the same tremulous
+voice.
+
+"Indeed, I do!" I cried, greatly touched by his helpless appeal, "I
+love you dearly, father. And I shall miss you sadly."
+
+"Must I go away then?" he whispered. "Cannot I stay here till my
+summons hence? It will not be long, it will not be long, my child."
+
+With the cry of a hurt animal, Martha sprang up and rushed past us
+into the house. Ernest followed her, and we heard them talking
+together a long time. At last Ernest joined us.
+
+"Father," he said, "Martha is a good deal wounded and disappointed,
+at your reluctance to, go with her. She threatened to break off her
+engagement rather than to be separated from you. I really think you
+would be better off with her than with us. You would enjoy country
+life, because it is what you have been accustomed to; you could spend
+hours of every day in driving about; just what your health requires."
+
+Father did not reply. He took Ernest's arm and tottered into the
+house. Then we had a most painful scene. Martha reminded him with
+bitter tears that her mother had committed him to her with her last
+breath and set before him all the advantages he would have in her
+house over ours. Father sat pale and inflexible; tear after tear
+rolling down his cheeks. Ernest looked distressed and ready to sink.
+As for me I cried with Martha, and with her father by turns, and
+clung to Ernest with a feeling that all the foundations of the earth
+were giving way. It came time for evening prayers, and Ernest prayed
+as he rarely does, for he is rarely so moved. He quieted us all by a
+few simple words of appeal to Him who loved us, and father then
+consented to spend the summer with Martha if he might call our home
+his home, and be with us through the winter. But this was not till
+long after the rest of us went to bed, and a hard battle with Ernest.
+He says Ernest is his favorite child, and that I am his favorite
+daughter, and our children inexpressibly dear to him. I am ashamed to
+write down what he said of me. Besides, I am sure there is a wicked,
+wicked triumph over Martha in my secret heart. I am too elated with
+his extraordinary preference for us, to sympathize with her
+mortification and grief as ought. Something whispered that she who
+has never pitied me deserves no pity now. But I do not like this mean
+and narrow spirit in myself; nay more, I hate and abhor it.
+
+The marriage took place and they all went off together, father's
+rigid, white face, whiter, more rigid than ever. I am to go to
+mother's with the children at once. I feel that a great stone has
+been rolled away from before the door of my heart; the one human
+being who refused me a kindly smile, a sympathizing word, has gone,
+never to return. May God go with her and give her a happy home, and
+make her true and loving to those motherless little ones!
+
+
+
+Chapter 19
+
+XIX.
+
+OCTOBER 1.
+
+I Have had a charming summer with dear mother; and now I have the
+great joy, so long deferred, of having her in my own home. Ernest has
+been very cordial about it, and James has settled up all her worldly
+affairs, so that she has nothing to do now but to love us and let us
+love her. It is a pleasant picture to see her with my little darlings
+about her, telling the old sweet story she told me so often, and
+making God and Heaven and Christ such blissful realities. As I
+listen, I realize that it is to her I owe that early, deeply-seated
+longing to please the Lord Jesus, which I never remember as having a
+beginning, or an ending, though it did have its fluctuations. And it
+is another pleasant picture to see her sit in her own old chair,
+which Ernest was thoughtful enough to have brought for her, pondering
+cheerfully over her Bible and her Thomas a Kempis just as I have seen
+her do ever since I can remember. And there is still a third pleasant
+picture, only that it is a new one; it is as she sits at my right
+hand at the table, the living personification of the blessed gospel
+of good tidings, with father, opposite, the fading image of the law
+given by Moses. For father has come back; father and all his
+ailments, his pill-boxes, his fits of despair and his fits of dying.
+But he is quiet and gentle, and even loving, and as he sits in his
+corner, his Bible on his knees, I see how much more he reads the New
+Testament than he used to do, and that the fourteenth chapter of St.
+John almost opens to him of itself.
+
+I must do Martha the justice to say that her absence, while it
+increases my domestic peace and happiness, increases my cares also.
+What with the children, the housekeeping, the thought for mother's
+little comforts and the concern for father's, I am like a bit of
+chaff driven before the wind, and always in a hurry. There are so
+many stitches to be taken, so many things to pass through one's brain!
+Mother says no mortal woman ought to undertake so much, but what
+can I do? While Ernest is straining every nerve to pay off those
+debts, I must do all the needlework, and we must get along with
+servants whose want of skill makes them willing to put up with low
+wages. Of course I cannot tell mother this, and I really believe she
+thinks I scrimp and pinch and overdo out of mere stinginess.
+
+DECEMBER 30.-Ernest came to me to-day with our accounts for the last
+three months. He looked quite worried, for him, and asked me if there
+were any expenses we could cut down.
+
+My heart jumped up into my mouth, and I said in an irritated way:
+
+"I am killing myself with over-work now. Mother says so. I sew every
+night till twelve o'clock, and I feel all jaded out."
+
+"I did not mean that I wanted you to do anymore than you are doing
+now, dear," he said, kindly. "I know you are all jaded out, and I
+look on this state of feverish activity with great anxiety. Are all
+these stitches absolutely necessary?"
+
+"You men know nothing about such things," I said, while my conscience
+pricked me as I went on hurrying to finish the fifth tuck in one of
+Una's little dresses. "Of course I want my children to look decent."
+
+Ernest sighed.
+
+"I really don't know what to do," he said, in a hopeless way.
+"Father's persisting in living with us is throwing a burden on you,
+that with all your other cares is quite too much for you. I see and
+feel it every day. Don't you think I had better explain this to him
+and let him go to Martha's?"
+
+"No, indeed!" I said. "He shall stay here if it kills me, poor old
+man!"
+
+Ernest began once more to look over the bills.
+
+"I don't know how it is," he said, "but since Martha left us our
+expenses have increased a good deal."
+
+Now the truth is that when Aunty paid me most generously for teaching
+her children, I did not dare to offer my earnings to Ernest, lest he
+should be annoyed. So I had quietly used it for household expenses,
+and it had held out till about the time of Martha's marriage.
+Ernest's injustice was just as painful, just as insufferable as if he
+had known this, and I now burst out with whatever my rasped,
+over-taxed nerves impelled me to say, like one possessed.
+
+Ernest was annoyed and surprised.
+
+"I thought we had done with these things," he said, and gathering up
+the papers he went off.
+
+I rose and locked my door and threw myself down upon the floor in an
+agony of shame, anger, and physical exhaustion. I did not know how
+large a part of what seemed mere childish ill-temper was really the
+cry of exasperated nerves, that had been on too strained a tension,
+and silent too long, and Ernest did not know it either. How could he?
+His profession kept him for hours every day in the open air; there
+were times when his work was done and he could take entire rest; and
+his health is absolutely perfect. But I did not make any excuse for
+myself at the moment. I was overwhelmed with the sense of my utter
+unfitness to be a wife and a mother.
+
+Then I heard Ernest try to open the door; and finding it locked, he
+knocked, calling pleasantly:
+
+"It is I, darling; let me in."
+
+I opened it reluctantly enough.
+
+"Come," he said, "put on your things and drive about with me on my
+rounds. I have no long visits to make, and while I am seeing my
+patients you will be getting the air, which you need."
+
+"I do not want to go," I said. "I do not feel well enough. Besides,
+there's my work."
+
+"You can't see to sew with these red eyes," he declared.
+"Come! I prescribe a drive, as your physician."
+
+"Oh, Ernest, how kind, how forgiving you are?", I cried, running into
+the arms he held out to me, "If you knew how ashamed, how sorry, I
+am!"
+
+"And if you only knew how ashamed and sorry I am!" he returned. "I
+ought to have seen how you taxing and over-taxing yourself, doing
+your work and Martha's too. It must not go on so."
+
+By this time, with a veil over my face, he had got me downstairs and
+out into the air, which fanned my fiery cheeks and cooled my heated
+brain. It seemed to me that I have had all this tempest about nothing
+at all, and that with a character still so undisciplined, I was
+utterly unworthy to be either a wife or a mother. But when I tried to
+say so in broken words, Ernest comforted me with the gentleness and
+tenderness of a woman.
+
+"Your character is not undisciplined, my darling," he said. "Your
+nervous organization is very peculiar, and you have had unusual cares
+and trials from the beginning of our married life. I ought not to
+have confronted you with my father's debts at a moment when you had
+every reason to look forward to freedom from most petty economies and
+cares."
+
+"Don't say so," I interrupted. "If you had not told me you had this
+draft on your resources I should have always suspected you of
+meanness. For you know, dear, you have kept me-that is to say-you
+could not help it, but I suppose men can't understand how many
+demands are made upon a mother for money almost every day. I got
+along very well till the children came, but since then it has been
+very hard."
+
+"Yes," he said, "I am sure it has. But let me finish what I was going
+to say. I want you to make a distinction for yourself, which I make
+for you, between mere ill-temper, and the irritability that is the
+result of a goaded state of the nerves. Until you do that, nothing
+can be done to relieve you from what I am sure, distresses and
+grieves you exceedingly. Now, I suppose that whenever you speak to me
+or the children in this irritated way you lose your own self-respect,
+for the time, at least, and feel degraded in the sight of God also."
+
+"Oh, Ernest! there are no words in any language that mean enough to
+express the anguish I feel when I speak quick, impatient words to
+you, the one human being in the universe whom I love with all my
+heart and soul, and to my darling little children who are almost as
+dear! I pray and mourn over it day and night. God only knows how I
+hate myself on account of this one horrible sin!"
+
+"It is a sin only as you deliberately and wilfully fulfill the
+conditions that lead to such results. Now I am sure if you could once
+make up your mind in the fear of God, never to undertake more work of
+any sort than you can carry on calmly, quietly, without hurry or
+flurry, and the instant you find yourself growing nervous and like
+one out of breath, would stop and take breath, you would find this
+simple, common-sense rule doing for you what no prayers or tears
+could ever accomplish. Will you try it for one month, my darling?"
+
+"But we can't afford it," I cried, with almost a groan. "Why, you
+have told me this very day that our expenses must be cut down, and
+now you want me to add to them by doing less work. But the work must
+be done. The children must be clothed, there is no end to the
+stitches to be taken for them, and your stockings must be mended-you
+make enormous holes in them! and you don't like it if you ever find a
+button wanting to a shirt or your supply of shirts getting low."
+
+"All you say may be very true," he returned, "but I am determined
+that you shall not be driven to desperation as you have been of
+late."
+
+By this time we had reached the house where his visit was to be made,
+and I had nothing to do but lean back and revolve all he had been
+saying, over and over again, and to see its reasonableness while I
+could not see what was so be done for my relief. Ah, I have often
+felt in moments of bitter grief at my impatience with my children,
+that perhaps God pitied more than He blamed me for it! And now my
+dear husband was doing the same!
+
+When Ernest had finished his visit we drove on again in silence.
+
+At last, I asked:
+
+"Do tell me, Ernest, if you worked out this problem all by yourself?"
+
+He smiled a little.
+
+"No, I did not. But I have had a patient for two or three years whose
+case has interested me a good deal, and for whom I finally prescribed
+just as I have done for you. The thing worked like a charm, and she
+is now physically and morally quite well.
+
+"I dare say her husband is a rich man," I said.
+
+"He is not as poor as your husband, at any rate," Ernest replied.
+"But rich or poor I am determined not to sit looking on while you
+exert yourself so far beyond your strength. Just think, dear, suppose
+for fifty or a hundred or two hundred dollars a year you could buy a
+sweet, cheerful, quiet tone of mind, would you hesitate one moment to
+do so? And you can do it if you will. You are not ill-tempered but
+quick-tempered; the irritability which annoys you so is a physical
+infirmity which will disappear the moment you cease to be goaded into
+it by that exacting mistress you have hitherto been to yourself."
+
+All this sounded very plausible while Ernest was talking, but the
+moment I got home I snatched up my work from mere force of habit.
+
+"I may as well finish this as it is begun," I said to myself, and
+the stitches flew from my needle like sparks of fire. Little Ernest
+came and begged for a story, but I put him off. Then Una wanted to
+sit in my lap, but I told her I was too busy. In the course of an
+hour the influence of the fresh air and Ernest's talk had nearly lost
+their power over me; my thread kept breaking, the children leaned on
+and tired me, the baby woke up and cried, and I got all out of
+patience.
+
+"Do go away, Ernest," I said, "and let mamma have a little peace.
+Don't you see how busy I am? Go and play with Una like a good boy."
+But he would not go, and kept teasing Una till she too, began to cry,
+and she and baby made a regular concert of it.
+
+"Oh, dear!" I sighed, "this work will never be done!" and threw it
+down impatiently, and took the baby impatiently, and began to walk up
+and down with him impatiently. I was not willing that this little
+darling, whom I love so dearly, should get through with his nap and
+interrupt my work; yet I was displeased with myself, and tried by
+kissing him to make some amends for the hasty, un pleasant tones with
+which I had grieved him and frightened the other children. This
+evening Ernest came to me with a larger sum of money than he had ever
+given me at one time.
+
+"Now every cent of this is to be spent," he said, "in having work
+done. I know any number of poor women who will be thankful to have
+all you can give them."
+
+Dear me I it is easy to talk, and I do feel grateful to Ernest for
+his thoughtfulness and kindness. But I am almost in rags, and need
+every cent of this money to make myself decent. I am positively
+ashamed to go anywhere, my clothes are so shabby. Besides, supposing
+I leave off sewing and all sorts of over-doing of a kindred nature, I
+must nurse baby, I suppose, and be up with him nights and others will
+have their cross days and their sick and father will have his. Alas,
+there can be for no royal road to a "sweet, cheerful, quiet tone of
+mind!"
+
+JANUARY 1, 1844.-Mother says Ernest is entirely right in forbidding
+my working so hard. I own that I already feel better. I have all the
+time I need to read my Bible and to pray now, and the children do not
+irritate and annoy me as they did. Who knows but I shall yet become
+quite amiable?
+
+Ernest made his father very happy to-day by telling him that the
+last of those wretched debts is paid. I think that he might have told
+me that this deliverance was at hand. I did not know but we had years
+of these struggles with poverty before us. What with the relief from
+this anxiety, my improved state of health, and father's pleasure, I
+am in splendid spirits to-day. Ernest, too, seems wonderfully
+cheerful, and we both feel that we may now look forward to a quiet
+happiness we have never known. With such a husband and such children
+as mine, I ought to be the most grateful creature on earth. And I
+have dear mother and James besides. I don't quite know what to think
+about James' relation to Lucy. He is so brimful running over with
+happiness that he is also full of fun and of love, and after all he
+may only like her as a cousin.
+
+FEB. 14.-Father has not been so well of late. It seems as if he kept
+up until he was relieved about those debts, and then sunk down. I
+read to him a good deal, and so does mother, but his mind is still
+dark, and he looks forward to the hour of death with painful
+misgivings. He is getting a little childish about my leaving him, and
+clings to me exactly as if I were his own child. Martha spends a good
+deal of time with him, and fusses over him in a way that I wonder she
+does not see is annoying to him. He wants to be read to, to hear a
+hymn sung or a verse repeated, and to be left otherwise in perfect
+quiet. But she is continually pulling out and shaking up his pillows,
+bathing his head in hot vinegar and soaking his feet. It looks so odd
+to see her in one of the elegant silk dresses old Mr. Underhill
+makes her wear, with her sleeves rolled up, the skirt hid away under
+a large apron, rubbing away at poor father till it seems as if his
+tired soul would fly out of him.
+
+FEB. 20.-Father grows weaker every day. Ernest has sent for his other
+children, John and Helen. Martha is no longer able to come here; her
+husband is very sick with a fever, and cannot be left alone. No doubt
+he enjoys her bustling way of nursing, and likes to have his pillows
+pushed from under him every five minutes. I am afraid I feel glad
+that she is kept away, and that I have father all to myself. Ernest
+never was so fond of me as he is now. I don't know what to make of
+it.
+
+FEB 22.-John and his wife and Helen have come. They stay at Martha's,
+where there is plenty of room. John's wife is a little soft dumpling
+thing, and looks up to him as a mouse would up at a steeple. He
+strikes me as a very selfish man. He steers straight for the best
+seat, leaving her standing, if need be, accepts her humble attentions
+with the air of one collecting his just debt and is continually
+snubbing and setting her right. Yet in some things he is very like
+Ernest, and perhaps a wife destitute of self-assertion and without
+much individuality would have spoiled him as Harriet has spoiled
+John. For I think it must be partly her fault that he dares to be so
+egotistical. Helen, is the dearest, prettiest creature I ever saw.
+Oh, why would James take a fancy to Lucy! I feel the new delight of
+having a sister to love and to admire. And she will love me in time;
+I feel sure of it.
+
+MARCH 1.-Father is very feeble and in great mental distress. He
+gropes about in the dark, and shudders at the approach of death. We
+can do nothing but pray for him. And the cloud will be lifted when he
+leaves this world, if not before. For I know he is a good, yes, a
+saintly man, dear to and dear to Christ.
+
+MARCH 4.-Dear father has gone. We were all kneeling and praying and
+weeping around him, when suddenly he called me to come to him. I went
+and let him lean his head on my breast, as he loved to do. Sometimes
+I have stood so by the hour together ready to sink with fatigue, and
+only kept up with the thought that if this were my own precious
+father's bruised head I could stand and hold it forever.
+
+"Daughter Katherine," he said, in his faint, tremulous way, "you have
+come with me to the very brink of the river. I thank God for all your
+cheering words and ways. I thank God for giving you to be a helpmeet
+to my son. Farewell, now," he added, in a low, firm voice, "I feel
+the bottom, and it is good!"
+
+He lay back on his pillow looking upward with an expression of
+seraphic peace and joy on his worn, meagre face, and so his life
+passed gently away.
+
+Oh, the affluence of God's payments! What a recompense for the poor
+love I had given my husband's father, and the poor little services I
+had rendered him! Oh, that I had never been impatient with him, never
+smiled at his peculiarities, never in my secret heart felt him
+unwelcome to my home! And how wholly I overlooked, in my blind
+selfishness, what he must have suffered in feeling himself, homeless,
+dwelling with us on sufferance, but master and head nowhere on earth!
+May God carry the lessons home to my heart of hearts, and make the
+cloud of mingled remorse and shame which now envelops me to descend
+in showers of love and benediction on every human soul that mine can
+bless!
+
+
+
+Chapter 20
+
+XX.
+
+APRIL.
+
+I HAVE had a new lesson which has almost broken my heart. In looking
+over his father's papers, Ernest found a little journal, brief in its
+records indeed, but we learn from it that on all those wedding and
+birthdays, when I fancied his austere religion made him hold aloof
+from our merry-making, he was spending the time in fasting and
+praying for us and for our children! Oh, shall I ever learn the sweet
+charity that thinketh no evil, and believeth all things? What
+blessings may not have descended upon us and our children through
+those prayers! What evils may they not have warded off! Dear old
+father! Oh, that I could once more put my loving arms about him and
+bid him welcome to our home! And how gladly would I now confess to
+him all my unjust judgments concerning him and entreat his
+forgiveness! Must life always go on thus? Must I always be erring,
+ignorant and blind? How I hate this arrogant sweeping past my brother
+man; this utter ignoring of his hidden life?
+
+I see now that it is well for mother that she did not come to live
+with me at the beginning of my married life. I should not have borne
+with her little peculiarities, nor have made her half so happy as I
+can now. I thank God that my varied disappointments and discomforts,
+my feeble health, my poverty, my mortifications have done me some
+little good, and driven me to Him a thousand times because I could
+not get along without His help. But I am not satisfied with my state
+in His sight. I am sure something is lacking, though I know not what
+it is.
+
+MAY.-Helen is going to stay here and live with Martha. How glad how
+enchanted I am! Old Mr. Underhill is getting well; I saw him to-day.
+He can talk of nothing but his illness, of Martha's wonderful skill
+in nursing him declaring that he owes his life to her. I felt a
+little piqued at this speech, because Ernest was very attentive to
+him, and no doubt did his share towards the cure. We have fitted up
+father's room for a nursery. Hitherto all the children have had to
+sleep in our room which has been bad for them and bad for us. I have
+been so afraid they would keep Ernest awake if they were unwell and
+restless. I have secured an excellent nurse, who is as fresh and
+blooming as the flower whose name she bears. The children are already
+attached to her, and I feel that the worst of my life is now over.
+
+JUNE.-Little Ernest was taken sick on the day I wrote that. The
+attack was fearfully sudden and violent. He is still very, very ill.
+I have not forgotten that I said once that I would give my children
+to God should He ask for them. And I will. But oh, this agony of suspense! It
+eats into my soul and eats it away. Oh, my little Ernest! My
+first-born son! My pride, my joy, my hope! And I thought the worst of
+my life was over!
+
+AUGUST.-We have come into the country with what God has left us, our
+two youngest children. Yes, I have tasted the bitter cup of
+bereavement, and drunk it down to its dregs. I gave my darling to
+God, I gave him, I gave him! But, oh, with what anguish I saw those
+round, dimpled limbs wither and waste away, the glad smile fade
+forever from that beautiful face! What a fearful thing it is to be a
+mother! But I have given my child to God. I would not recall him if I
+could. I am thankful He has counted me worthy to present Him so
+costly a gift.
+
+I cannot shed a tear, and I must find relief in writing, or I shall
+lose my senses. My noble, beautiful boy! My first-born son! And to
+think that my delicate little Una still lives, and that death has
+claimed that bright, glad creature who was the sunshine of our home!
+
+But let me not forget my mercies. Let me not forget that I have a
+precious husband and two darling children, and my kind, sympathizing
+mother left to me. Let me not forget how many kind friends gathered
+about us in our sorrow. Above all let me remember God's
+loving-kindness and tender mercy. He has not left us to the
+bitterness of a grief that refuses and disdains to be comforted. We
+believe in Him, we love Him, we worship as we never did before. My
+dear Ernest has felt this sorrow to his heart's core. But he has not
+for one moment questioned the goodness or the love of our Father in
+thus taking from us the child who promised to be our greatest earthly
+joy. Our consent to God's will has drawn us together very closely,
+together we bear the yoke in our youth, together we pray and sing
+praises in the very midst of our tears "I was dumb with silence
+because Thou didst it."
+
+SEPT. The old pain and cough have come back with the first cool
+nights of this month. Perhaps I am going to my darling--I do not know
+I am certainly very feeble. Consenting to suffer does not annul the
+suffering. Such a child could not go hence without rending and tearing
+its way out of the heart that loved it. This world is wholly changed
+to me and I walk in it like one in a dream. And dear Ernest is
+changed, too. He says little, and is all kindness and goodness to me,
+but I can see here is a wound that will never be healed. I am
+confined to my room now with nothing do but to think, think, think. I
+do not believe God has taken our child in mere displeasure, but
+cannot but feel that this affliction might not have been necessary if
+I had not so chafed and writhed and secretly repined at the way in
+which my home was invaded, and at our galling poverty. God has
+exchanged the one discipline for the other; and oh, how far more
+bitter is this cup!
+
+Oct. 4.-My darling boy would have been six years old to-day. Ernest
+still keeps me shut up, but he rather urges my seeing a friend now
+and. People say very strange things in the way of consolation. I
+begin to think that a tender clasp of the hand is about all one can
+give to the afflicted. One says I must not grieve, because my child
+is better off in heaven. Yes, he is better off; I know it, I feel
+it; but I miss him none the less. Others say he might have grown up
+to be a bad man and broken my heart. Perhaps he might, but I cannot
+make myself believe that likely. One lady asked me if this affliction
+was not a rebuke of my idolatry of my darling; and another, if I had
+not been in a cold, worldly state, needing this severe blow on that
+account.
+
+But I find no consolation or support in the remarks. My comfort is in
+my perfect faith in the goodness and love of my Father, my certainty
+that He had a reason in thus afflicting me that I should admire and
+adore if I knew what it was. And in the midst of my sorrow I have had
+and do have a delight in Him hitherto unknown, so that sometimes this
+room in which I am a prisoner seems like the very gate of heaven.
+
+MAY.-A long winter in my room, and all sorts of painful remedies and
+appliances and deprivations. And now I am getting well, and drive out
+every day. Martha sends her carriage, and mother goes with me. Dear
+mother! How nearly perfect she is! I never saw a sweeter face, nor
+ever heard sweeter expressions of faith in God, and love to all about
+her than hers. She has been my tower strength all through these weary
+months; and she has shared my sorrow and made it her own.
+
+I can see that dear Ernest's affliction and this prolonged anxiety
+about me have been a heavenly benediction to him I am sure that every
+mother whose sick child he visits will have a sympathy he could not
+have given while all our own little ones were alive and well. I thank
+God that He has thus increased my dear husband's usefulness as I
+think that He has mine also. How tenderly I already feel towards all
+suffering children, and how easy it will be now to be patient with
+them!
+
+KEENE, N. H. JULY 12.-It is a year ago this day that the brightest
+sunshine faded out of our lives, and our beautiful boy was taken from
+us. I have been tempted to spend this anniversary in bitter tears and
+lamentations. For oh, this sorrow is not healed by time! I feel it
+more and more. But I begged God when I first awoke this morning not to
+let me so dishonor and grieve Him. I may suffer, I must suffer, He
+means it, He wills it, but let it be without repining, without gloomy
+despondency. The world is full of sorrow; it is not I alone who taste
+its bitter draughts, nor have I the only right to a sad countenance.
+Oh, for patience to bear on, cost what it may!
+
+"Cheerfully and gratefully I lay myself and all that I am or own at
+the feet of Him who redeemed me with His precious blood, engaging to
+follow Him, bearing the cross He lays upon me." This is the least I
+can do, and I do it while my heart lies broken and bleeding at His
+feet.
+
+My dear little Una has improved somewhat in health, but I am never
+free from anxiety about her. She is my milk-white lamb, my dove, my
+fragrant flower. One cannot look in her pure face without a sense of
+peace and rest. She is the sentinel who voluntarily guards my door
+when I am engaged at my devotions; she is my little comforter when I
+am sad, my companion and friend at all times. I talk to her of
+Christ, and always have done, just as I think of Him, and as if I
+expected sympathy from her in my love to Him. It was the same with my
+darling Ernest. If I required a little self-denial, I said
+cheerfully, "This is hard, but doing it for our best Friend sweetens
+it," and their alacrity was pleasant to see. Ernest threw his whole
+soul into whatever he did, and sometimes when engaged in play would
+hesitate a little when directed to do something else, such as
+carrying a message for me, and the like. But if I said, "If you do
+this cheerfully and pleasantly, my darling, you do it for Jesus, and
+that will make Him smile upon you," he would invariably yield at
+once.
+
+Is not this the true, the natural way of linking every little daily
+act of a child's life with that Divine Love, that Divine Life which
+gives meaning to all things?
+
+But what do I mean by the vain boast that I have always trained my
+children thus? Alas! I have done it only at times; for while my
+theory was sound, my temper of mind was but too often unsound. I was
+often and often impatient with my dear little boy; often my tone was
+a worldly one; I often full of eager interest in mere outside things,
+and forgot that I was living or that my children were living save for
+the present moment.
+
+It seems now that I have a child in heaven, and am bound to the
+invisible world by such a tie that I can never again be entirely
+absorbed by this.
+
+I fancy my ardent, eager little boy as having some such employments
+in his new and happy home as he had here. I see him loving Him who
+took children in His arms and blessed them, with all the warmth of
+which his nature is capable, and as perhaps employed as one of those
+messengers whom God sends forth as His ministers. For I cannot think
+of those active feet, those busy hands as always quiet. Ah, my
+darling, that I could look in upon you for a moment, a single moment,
+and catch one of your radiant smiles; just one!
+
+AUGUST 4.-How full are David's Psalms of the cry of the sufferer! He
+must have experienced every kind of bodily and mental torture. He
+gives most vivid illustrations of the wasting, wearing process of
+disease-for instance, what a contrast is the picture we have of him
+when he was "ruddy, and withal of a beautiful countenance, and goodly
+to look to," and the one he paints of himself in after years, when he
+says, "I may tell all my bones they look and stare upon me; my days
+are like a shadow that declineth, and I am withered like grass. I am
+weary with groaning; all the night make I my bed to swim; I water my
+couch with my tears. For my soul is full of troubles; and my life
+draweth near unto the grave."
+
+And then what wails of anguish are these!
+
+"I am afflicted, and ready to die from my youth up, while I suffer
+thy terrors I am distracted. Thy wrath lieth hard upon me and thou
+hast afflicted me with all thy waves. All thy waves and thy billows
+have gone over me. Lover and friend hast thou put far from me, and
+mine acquaintance into utter darkness."
+
+Yet through it all what grateful joy in God, what expressions of
+living faith and devotion! During my long illness and confinement to
+my room, the Bible has been almost a new book to me, and I see that
+God has always dealt with His children as He deals with them now, and
+that no new thing has befallen me. All these weary days so full of
+languor, these nights so full of unrest, have had their appointed
+mission to my soul. And perhaps I have had no discipline so salutary
+as this forced inaction and uselessness, at a time when youth and
+natural energy continually cried out for room and work.
+
+AUGUST 15.-I dragged out my drawing materials in a listless way this
+morning, and began to sketch the beautiful scene from my window. At
+first I could not feel interested. It seemed as if my hand was
+crippled and lost its cunning when it unloosed its grasp of little
+Ernest, and let him go. But I prayed, as I worked, that I might not
+yield to the inclination to despise and throw away the gift with
+which God has Himself endowed me. Mother was gratified, and said it
+rested her to see me act like myself once more. Ah, I have been very
+selfish, and have been far too much absorbed with my sorrow and my
+illness and my own petty struggles.
+
+AUGUST 19.-I met to-day an old friend, Maria Kelly, who is married,
+it seems, and settled down in this pretty village. She asked so many
+questions about my little Ernest that I had to tell her the whole
+story of his precious life, sickness and death. I forced myself to do
+this quietly, and without any great demand on her sympathies. My
+reward for the constraint I thus put upon myself was the abrupt
+question:
+
+"Haven't you grown stoical?"
+
+I felt the angry blood rush through my veins as it has not done in a
+long time. My pride was wounded to the quick, and those cruel, unjust
+words still rankle in my heart. This is not as it should be. I am
+constantly praying that my pride may be humbled, and then when it is
+attacked, I shrink from the pain the blow causes, and am angry with
+the hand that inflicts it. It is just so with two or three unkind
+things Martha has said to me. I can't help brooding over them and
+feeling stung with their injustice, even while making the most
+desperate struggle to rise above and forget them. It is well for our
+fellow-creatures that God forgives and excuses them, when we fail to
+do it, and I can easily fancy that poor Maria Kelly is at this moment
+dearer in His sight than I am who have taken fire at a chance word.
+And I can see now, what I wonder I did not see at the time, that God
+was dealing very kindly and wisely with me when He made Martha
+overlook my good qualities, of which I suppose I have some, as
+everybody else has, and call out all my bad ones, since the axe was
+thus laid at the root of self-love. And it is plain that self-love
+cannot die without a fearful struggle.
+
+MAY 26, 1846.-How long it is since I have written in my journal! We
+have had a winter full of cares, perplexities and sicknesses. Mother
+began it by such a severe attack of inflammatory rheumatism as I
+could not have supposed she could live through. Her sufferings were
+dreadful, and I might almost say her patience was, for I often
+thought it would be less painful to hear her groan and complain, than
+to witness such heroic fortitude, such sweet docility under God's
+hand. I hope I shall never forget the lessons I have learned in her
+sick-room. Ernest says he never shall cease to rejoice that she lives
+with us, and that he can watch over her health. He, has indeed been
+like a son to her, and this has been a great solace amid all her
+sufferings. Before she was able to leave the room, poor little Una
+was prostrated by one of her ill turns, and is still very feeble. The
+only way in which she can be diverted is by reading to her, and I
+have done little else these two months but hold her in my arms,
+singing little songs and hymns, telling stories and reading what few
+books I can find that are unexciting, simple, yet entertaining. My
+precious little darling! She bears the yoke in her youth without a
+frown, but it is agonizing to see her suffer so. How much easier it
+would be to bear all her physical infirmities myself! I suppose to
+those who look on from the outside, we must appear like a most
+unhappy family, since we hardly get free from one trouble before
+another steps in. But I see more and more that happiness is not
+dependent on health or any other outside prosperity. We are at peace
+with each other and at peace with God; His dealings with us do not
+perplex or puzzle us, though we do not pretend to understand them. On
+the other hand, Martha with absolutely perfect health, with a husband
+entirely devoted to her, and with every wish gratified, yet seems
+always careworn and dissatisfied. Her servants worry her very life
+out; she misses the homely household duties to which she has been
+accustomed; and her conscience stumbles at little things, and
+overlooks greater ones. It is very interesting, I think, to study
+different homes, as well as the different characters that form them.
+
+Amelia's little girls are quiet, good children, to whom their father
+writes what Mr. Underhill and Martha pronounce "beautiful" letters,
+wherein he always styles himself their "broken-hearted but devoted
+father." "Devotion," to my mind, involves self-sacrifice, and I
+cannot reconcile its use, in this case, with the life of ease he
+leads, while all the care of his children is thrown upon others. But
+some people, by means of a few such phrases, not only impose upon
+themselves but upon their friends, and pass for persons of great
+sensibility.
+
+As I have been confined to the house nearly the whole winter, I have
+had to derive my spiritual support from books, and as mother
+gradually recovered, she enjoyed Leighton with me, as I knew she
+would. Dr. Cabot comes to see us very often, but, I do not now find
+it possible to get the instruction from him I used to do. I see that
+the Christian life must be individual, as the natural character
+is-and that I cannot be exactly like Dr. Cabot, or exactly like Mrs.
+Campbell, or exactly like mother, though they all three stimulate and
+are an inspiration to me. But I see, too, that the great points of
+similarity in Christ's disciples have always been the same. This is
+the testimony of all the good books, sermons, hymns, and, memoirs I
+read-that God's ways are infinitely perfect; that we are to love Him
+for what He is, and therefore equally as much when He afflicts as
+when He prospers us; that there is no real happiness but in doing and
+suffering His will, and that this life is but a scene of probation
+through which we pass to the real life above.
+
+
+
+Chapter 21
+
+XXI.
+
+MAY 30.
+
+ERNEST asked me to go with him to see one of his patients, as he
+often does when there is a lull in the tempest at home. We both feel
+that as we have so little money of our own to give away, it is a
+privilege to give what services and what cheering words we can. As I
+took it for granted that we were going to see some poor old woman, I
+put up several little packages of tea and sugar, with which Susan
+Green always keeps me supplied, and added a bottle of my own
+raspberry vinegar, which never comes amiss, I find, to old people.
+Ernest drove to the door of an aristocratic-looking house, and helped
+me to alight in his usual silence.
+
+"It is probably one of the servants we are going to visit," I
+thought, within myself; "but I am surprised at his bringing me. The
+family may not approve it."
+
+The next thing I knew I found myself being introduced to a beautiful,
+brilliant young lady, who sat in a wheel-chair like a queen on a
+throne in a room full of tasteful ornaments, flowers and birds. Now,
+I had come away just as I was, when Ernest called me, and that "was"
+means a very plain gingham dress wherein I had been darning stockings
+all the morning. I suppose a saint wouldn't have cared for that, but
+I did, and for a moment stood the picture of confusion, my hands full
+of oddly shaped parcels and my face all in a flame.
+
+"My wife, Miss Clifford," I heard Ernest say, and then I caught the
+curious, puzzled look in her eyes, which said as plainly as words
+could do:
+
+"What has the creature brought me?"
+
+"I ask your pardon, Miss Clifford," I said, thinking it best to speak
+out just the honest truth, "but I supposed the doctor was taking me
+to see some of his old women, and so I have brought you a little tea,
+and a little sugar, and a bottle of raspberry vinegar!"
+
+"How delicious!" cried she. "It really rests me to meet with a
+genuine human being at last! Why didn't you make some stiff, prim
+speech, instead of telling the truth out and out? I declare I mean to
+keep all you have brought me, just for the fun of the thing."
+
+This put me at ease, and I forgot all about my dress in a moment.
+
+"I see you are just what the doctor boasted you were," she went on.
+"But he never would bring you to see me before. I suppose he has told
+you why I could not go to see you?"
+
+"To tell the truth, he never speaks to me of his patients unless he
+thinks I can be of use to them."
+
+"I dare say I do not look much like an invalid," said she; "but here
+I am, tied to this chair. It is six months since I could bear my own
+weight upon my feet."
+
+I saw then that though her face was so bright and full of color, her
+hand was thin and transparent. But what a picture she made as she sat
+there in magnificent beauty, relieved by such a back-ground of
+foliage, flowers, and artistic objects!
+
+"I told the doctor the other day that life was nothing but a humbug,
+and he said he should bring me a remedy against that false notion the
+next time he came, and you, I suppose, are that remedy," she
+continued. "Come, begin; I am ready to take any number of doses."
+
+I could only laugh and try to look daggers at Ernest, who sat looking
+over a magazine, apparently absorbed in its contents.
+
+"Ah!" she cried, nodding her head sagaciously, "I knew you would
+agree with me."
+
+"Agree with you in calling life a humbug!" I cried, now fairly
+aroused. "Death itself is not more a reality!"
+
+"I have not tried death yet," she said, more seriously; "but I have
+tried life twenty-five years and I know all about it. It is eat,
+drink, sleep yawn and be bored. It is what shall I wear, where shall
+I go, how shall I get rid of the time; it says, 'How do you do? how
+is your husband? How are your children? '-it means, 'Now I have asked
+all the conventional questions, and I don't care a fig what their
+answer may be.'"
+
+"This may be its meaning to some persons," I replied, "for instance,
+to mere pleasure-seekers. But of course it is interpreted quite
+differently by others. To some it means nothing but a dull, hopeless
+struggle with poverty and hardship--and its whole aspect might be
+changed to them, should those who do not know what to do to get rid
+of the time, spend their surplus leisure in making this struggle less
+brutalizing."
+
+"Yes, I have heard such doctrine, and at one time I tried charity
+myself. I picked up a dozen or so of dirty little wretches out of the
+streets, and undertook to clothe and teach them. I might as well have
+tried to instruct the chairs in my room. Besides the whole house had
+to be aired after they had gone, and mamma missed two teaspoons and a
+fork and was perfectly disgusted with the whole thing. Then I fell to
+knitting socks for babies, but they only occupied my hands, and my
+head felt as empty as ever. Mamma took me off on a journey, as she
+always did when I took to moping, and that diverted me for a while.
+But after that everything went on in the old way. I got rid of part
+of the day by changing my dress, and putting on my pretty things-it
+is a great thing to have a habit of wearing one's ornaments, for
+instance; and then in the evening one could go to the opera or the
+theater, or some other place of amusement, after which one could
+sleep all through the next morning, and so get rid of that. But I had
+been used to such things all my life, and they had got to be about as
+flat as flat can be. If I had been born a little earlier in the
+history of the world, I would have gone into a convent; but that sort
+of thing is out of fashion now."
+
+"The best convent," I said, "for a woman is the seclusion of her own
+home. There she may find vocation and fight her battles, and there
+she may learn the reality and the earnestness of life."
+
+"Pshaw!" cried she. "Excuse me, however, saying that; but some of
+the most brilliant girls I know have settled down into mere married
+women and spend their whole time in nursing babies! Think how
+belittling!"
+
+"Is it more so than spending it in dressing, driving, dancing, and
+the like?"
+
+"Of course it is. I had a friend once who shone like a star in
+society. She married, and children as fast as she could. Well! what
+consequence? She lost her beauty, lost her spirit and animation, lost
+her youth, and lost her health. The only earthly things she can talk
+about are teething, dieting, and the measles!"
+
+I laughed at this exaggeration, and looked round to see what Ernest
+thought of such talk. But he had disappeared.
+
+"As you have spoken plainly to me, knowing, me, to be a wife and a
+mother, you must allow me to 'speak plainly in return," I began.
+
+"Oh, speak plainly, by all means! I am quite sick and tired of having
+truth served up in pink cotton, and scented with lavender."
+
+"Then you will permit me to say that when you speak contemptuously of
+the vocation of maternity, you dishonor, not only the mother who bore
+you, but the Lord Jesus Himself, who chose to be born of woman, and
+to be ministered unto by her through a helpless infancy."
+
+Miss Clifford was a little startled.
+
+"How terribly in earnest you are!" she said. "It is plain that to you,
+at any rate, life is indeed no humbug."
+
+I thought of my dear ones, of Ernest, of my children, of mother, and
+of James, and I thought of my love to them and of theirs to me. And I
+thought of Him who alone gives reality to even such joys as these. My
+face must have been illuminated by the thought, for she dropped the
+bantering tone she had used hitherto, and asked, with real
+earnestness:
+
+"What is it you know, and that I do not know, that makes you so
+satisfied, while I am so dissatisfied?"
+
+I hesitated before I answered, feeling as I never felt before how
+ignorant, how unfit to lead others, I really am. Then I said:
+
+"Perhaps you need to know God, to know Christ?"
+
+She looked disappointed and tired. So I came away, first promising,
+at her request, to go to see her again. I found Ernest just driving
+up, and told him what had passed. He listened in his usual silence,
+and I longed to have him say whether I had spoken wisely and well.
+
+JUNE 1.-I have been to see Miss Clifford again and made mother go
+with me. Miss Clifford took a fancy to her at once.
+
+"Ah!" she said, after one glance at the dear, loving face, "nobody
+need tell me that you are good and kind. But I am a little afraid of
+good people. I fancy they are always criticising me and expecting me
+to imitate their perfection."
+
+"Perfection does not exact perfection," was mother's answer. "I would
+rather be judged by an angel than by a man." And then mother led her
+on, little by little, and most adroitly, to talk of herself and of
+her state of health. She is an orphan and lives in this great,
+stately house alone with her servants. Until she was laid aside by
+the state pf her health, she lived in the world and of it. Now she is
+a prisoner, and prisoners have time to think.
+
+"Here I sit," she said, "all day long. I never was fond of staying
+at home, or of reading, and needlework I absolutely hate. In fact, I
+do not know how to sew."
+
+"Some such pretty, feminine work might beguile you of a few of the
+long hours of these long days," said mother. "One can't be always
+reading."
+
+"But a lady came to see me, a Mrs. Goodhue, one of your good sort, I
+suppose, and she preached me quite a sermon on the employment of
+time. She said I had a solemn admonition of Providence, and ought to
+devote myself entirely to religion. I had just begun to be interested
+in a bit of embroidery, but she frightened me out of it. But I can't
+bear such dreadfully good people, with faces a mile long."
+
+Mother made her produce the collar, or whatever it was, showed her
+how to hold her needle and arrange her pattern, and they both got so
+absorbed in it that I had leisure to look at some of the beautiful
+things with which the room was full.
+
+"Make the object of your life right," I heard mother say, at last,
+"and these little details will take care of themselves."
+
+"But I haven't any object," Miss Clifford objected, "unless it is to
+get through these tedious days somehow. Before I was taken ill my
+chief object was to make myself attractive to the people I met. And
+the easiest way to do that was to dress becomingly and make myself
+look as well as I could."
+
+"I suppose," said mother, "that most girls could say the same. They
+have an instinctive desire to please, and they take what they
+conceive to be the shortest and easiest road to that end. It requires
+no talent, no education, no thought to dress tastefully; the most
+empty-hearted frivolous young person can do it, provided she has
+money enough. Those who can't get the money make up for it by fearful
+expenditure of precious time. They plan, they cut, they fit, they
+rip, they trim till they can appear in society looking exactly like
+everybody else. They think of nothing, talk of nothing but how this
+shall be fashioned and that be trimmed; and as to their hair, Satan
+uses it as his favorite net, and catches them in it every day of
+their lives."
+
+"But I never cut or trimmed," said Miss Clifford.
+
+"No, because you could afford to have it done for you. But you
+acknowledge that you spent a great deal of time in dressing because
+you thought that the easiest way of making yourself attractive. But
+it does not follow that the easiest way is the best way, and
+sometimes the longest way round is the shortest way home."
+
+"For instance?"
+
+"Well, let us imagine a young lady, living in the world as you say
+you lived. She has never seriously reflected on any subject one half
+hour in her life. She has been borne on by the current and let it
+take her where it would. But at last some influence is brought to
+bear upon her which leads her to stop to look about her and to think.
+She finds herself in a world of serious, momentous events. She see
+she cannot live in it, was not meant to live in it forever, and that
+her whole unknown future depends on what she is, not on how she
+looks. She begins to cast about for some plan of life, and this
+leads---"
+
+"A plan of life?" Miss Clifford interrupted. "I never heard of such a
+thing."
+
+"Yet you would smile at an architect, who having a noble structure to
+build, should begin to work on it in a haphazard way, putting in a
+brick here and a stone there, weaving in straws and sticks if they
+come to hand, and when asked on what work he was engaged, and what
+manner of building he intended to erect, should reply he had no plan,
+but thought something would come of it."
+
+Miss Clifford made no reply. She sat with her head resting on her
+band, looking dreamily before her, a truly beautiful, but unconscious
+picture. I too, began to reflect, that while I had really aimed to
+make the most out of life, I had not done it methodically or
+intelligently.
+
+We are going to try to stay in town this summer. Hitherto Ernest
+would not listen to my suggestion of what an economy this would be.
+He always said this would turn out anything but an economy in the
+end. But now we have no teething baby; little Raymond is a strong,
+healthy child, and Una remarkably well for her, and money is so slow
+to come in and so fast to go out. What discomforts we suffer in the
+country it would take a book to write down, and here we shall have
+our own home, as usual. I shall not have to be separated from Ernest,
+and shall have leisure to devote to two very interesting people who
+must stay in town all the year round, no matter who goes out of it. I
+mean dear Mrs. Campbell and Miss Clifford, who both attract me,
+though in such different ways.
+
+
+
+Chapter 22
+
+XXII.
+
+OCTOBER.
+
+WELL, I had my own way, and I am afraid it has been an unwise one,
+for though I have enjoyed the leisure afforded by everybody being out
+of town, and the opportunity it has given me to devote myself to the
+very sweetest work on earth, the care of my darling little ones, the
+heat and the stifling atmosphere have been trying for me and for
+them. My pretty Rose went last May, to bloom in a home of her own, so
+I thought I would not look for a nurse, but take the whole care of
+them myself. This would not be much of a task to a strong person, but
+I am not strong, and a great deal of the time just dressing them and
+taking them out to walk has exhausted me. Then all the mending and
+other sewing must be done, and with the over-exertion creeps in the
+fretful tone, the impatient word. Yet I never can be as impatient
+with little children as I should be but for the remembrance that I
+should count it only a joy to minister once more to my darling boy,
+cost what weariness it might.
+
+But now new cares are at hand, and I have been searching for a person
+to whom I can safely trust my children when I am laid aside. Thus far
+I have had, in this capacity, three different Temptations in human
+form.
+
+The first, a smart, tidy-looking woman, informed me at the outset
+that she was perfectly competent to take the whole charge of the
+children, and should prefer my attending to my own affairs while she
+attended to hers.
+
+I replied that my affairs lay chiefly in caring for and being with my
+children; to which she returned that she feared I should not suit
+her, as she had her own views concerning the training of children.
+She added, with condescension, that at all events she should expect
+in any case of difference (of judgment) between us, that I, being the
+younger and least experienced of the two, should always yield to her.
+She then went on to give me her views on the subject of nursery
+management.
+
+"In the first place," she said, "I never pet or fondle children. It
+makes them babyish and sickly."
+
+"Oh, I see you will not suit me," I cried. "You need go no farther. I
+consider love the best educator for a little child."
+
+"Indeed, I think I shall suit you perfectly," she replied, nothing
+daunted. "I have been in the business twenty years, and have always
+suited wherever I lived. You will be surprised to see how much sewing
+I shall accomplish, and how quiet I shall keep the children."
+
+"But I don't want them kept quiet," I persisted. "I want them to be
+as merry and cheerful as crickets, and I care a great deal more to
+have them amused than to have the sewing done, though that is
+important, I confess."
+
+"Very well, ma'am, I will sit and rock them by the hour if you wish
+it."
+
+"But I don't wish it," I cried, exasperated at the coolness which
+gave her such an advantage over me. "Let us say no more about it; you
+do not suit me, and the sooner we part the better. I must be mistress
+of my own house, and I want no advice in relation to my children."
+
+"I shall hardly leave you before you will regret parting with me,"
+she returned, in a placid, pitying, way.
+
+I was afraid I had not been quite dignified in my interview with this
+person, with whom I ought to have had no discussion, and my
+equanimity was not restored by her shaking hands with me a
+patronizing way at parting, and expressing the hope that I should one
+day "be a green tree in the Paradise of God." Nor was it any too
+great a consolation to find that she had suggested to my cook that my
+intellect was not quite sound.
+
+Temptation the second confessed that she knew nothing, but was
+willing to be taught. Yes, she might be willing, but she could not be
+taught. She could not see why Herbert should not have everything he
+chose to cry for, nor why she should not take the children to the
+kitchens where her friends abode, instead of keeping them out in the
+air. She could not understand why she must not tell Una every half
+hour that she was as fair as a lily, and that the little angels in
+heaven cried for such hair as hers. And there was no rhyme or reason,
+to her mind, why she could not have her friends visit in her nursery,
+since, as she declared, the cook would hear all her secrets if she
+received them in the kitchen. Her assurance that she thought me a
+very nice lady, and that there never were two such children as mine,
+failed to move my hard heart, and I was thankful when I got her out
+of the house.
+
+Temptation the third appeared, for a time, the perfection of a nurse.
+She kept herself and the nursery and the children in most refreshing
+order; she amused Una when she was more than usually unwell with a
+perfect fund of innocent stories; the work flew from her nimble
+fingers as if by magic. I boasted everywhere of my good luck, and
+sang her praises in Ernest's ears till he believed in her with all
+his heart. But one night we were out late; we had been spending the
+evening at Aunty's, and came in with Ernest's night-key as quietly as
+possible, in order not to arouse the children. I stole softly to the
+nursery to see if all was going on well there. Bridget, it seems, had
+taken the opportunity to wash her clothes in the nursery, and they
+hung all about the room drying, a hot fire raging for the purpose. In
+the midst of them, with a candle and prayer-book on a chair, Bridget
+knelt fast asleep, the candle within an inch of her sleeve. Her
+assurance when I aroused her that she was not asleep, but merely rapt
+in devotion, did not soften my hard heart, nor was I moved by the
+representation that she was a saint, and always wore black on that
+account. I packed her off in anything but a saintly frame, and felt
+that a fourth Temptation would scatter what little grace I possessed
+to the four winds. These changes upstairs made discord; too, below.
+My cook was displeased at so much coming and going, and made the
+kitchen a sort of a purgatory which I dreaded to enter. At last, when
+her temper fairly ran away with her, and she became impertinent to
+the last degree, I said, coolly:
+
+"If any lady should speak to me in this way I should resent it. But
+no lady would so far forget herself. And I overlook your rudeness on
+the ground that you do not know better than to use of such
+expressions."
+
+This capped the climax! She declared that she had never been told
+before that she was no and did not know how to behave, and gave
+warning at once.
+
+I wish I could help running to tell Ernest all these annoyances. It
+does no good, and only worries him. But how much of a woman's life is
+made up of such trials and provocations! and how easy is when on
+one's knees to bear them aright, and how far easier to bear them
+wrong when one finds the coal going too fast, the butter out just as
+sitting down to breakfast, the potatoes watery and the bread sour or
+heavy! And then when one is well nigh desperate, does one's husband
+fail to say, in bland tones:
+
+"My dear, if you would just speak to Bridget, I am sure she would
+improve."
+
+Oh, that there were indeed magic in a spoken word!
+
+And do what I can, the money Ernest gives me will not hold out. He
+knows absolutely nothing about that hydra-headed monster, a
+household. I have had to go back to sewing as furiously as ever. And
+with the sewing the old pain in the side has come back, and the
+sharp, quick speech that I hate, and, that Ernest hates, and that
+everybody hates. I groan, being burdened, and am almost weary of my
+life. And my prayers are all mixed up with worldly thoughts and
+cares. I am appalled at all the things that have got to be done
+before winter, and am tempted to cut short my devotions in order to
+have more time to accomplish what I must accomplish.
+
+How have I got into this slough? When was it that I came down from
+the Mount where I had seen the Lord, and came back to make these
+miserable, petty things as much my business as ever? Oh, these
+fluctuations in my religious life amaze me! I cannot doubt that I am
+really God's child; it would be dishonor to Him to doubt it. I cannot
+doubt that I have held as real communion with Him as with any earthly
+friend-and oh, it has been far sweeter!
+
+OCT. 20.-I made a parting visit to Mrs. Campbell to-day, and, as
+usual, have come away strengthened and refreshed. She said all sorts
+of kind things to cheer and encourage me, and stimulated me to take
+up the burden of life cheerfully and patiently, just as it comes. She
+assures me that these fluctuations of feeling will by degrees give
+place to a calmer life, especially if I avoid, so far as I can do it,
+all unnecessary work, distraction and hurry. And a few quiet, resting
+words from her have given me courage to press on toward perfection,
+no matter how much imperfection I see in myself and others. And now I
+am waiting for my Father's next gift, and the new cares and labors it
+will bring with it. I am glad it is not left for me to decide my own
+lot. I am afraid I should never see precisely the right moment for
+welcoming a new bird into my nest, dearly as I love the rustle of
+their wings and the sound of their voices when they do come. And
+surely He knows the right moments who knows all my struggles with a
+certain sort of poverty, poor health and domestic care. If I could
+feel that all the time, as I do at this moment, how happy I should
+always be!
+
+JANUARY 16, 1847.-This is the tenth anniversary of our wedding day,
+and it has been a delightful one. If I were called upon to declare
+what has been the chief element of my happiness, I should say it was
+not Ernest's love to me or mine to him, or that I am once more the
+mother of three children, or that my own dear mother still lives,
+though I revel in each and all of these. But underneath them all,
+deeper, stronger than all, lies a peace with God that I can compare
+to no other joy, which I guard as I would guard hid treasure, and
+which must abide if all things else pass away.
+
+My baby is two months old, and her name is Ethel. The three children
+together form a beautiful picture which I am never tired of admiring.
+But they will not give me much time for writing. This little new
+comer takes all there, is of me. Mother brings me pleasant reports of
+Miss Clifford, who under her gentle, wise influence is becoming an
+earnest Christian, already rejoicing in the Providence that arrested
+her where it did, and forced her to reflection. Mother says we ought
+to study God's providence more than we do since He has a meaning and
+a purpose in everything He does. Sometimes I can do this and find it
+a source of great happiness. Then worldly cares seem mere worldly
+cares, and I forget that His wise, kind hand is in every one of them.
+
+FEBRUARY.-Helen has been spending the whole day with me, as she often
+does, helping me with her skillful needle, and with the children, in
+a very sweet way. I am almost ashamed to indulge in writing down how
+dearly she seems to love me, and how disposed she is to sit at my
+feet as a learner at the very moment I am longing to possess her
+sweet, gentle temper. But one thing puzzles me, in her, and that is
+the difficulty she finds in getting hold of these simple truths her
+father used to grope after but never found till just as he was
+passing out of the world. It seems as if God had compensated such
+turbulent, fiery natures as mine, by revealing Himself to them, for
+the terrible hours of shame and sorrow through which their sins and
+follies cause them to pass. I suffer far more than Helen does, suffer
+bitterly, painfully, but I enjoy ten-fold more. For I know whom I have
+believed, and I cannot doubt that I am truly united to Him. Helen is
+naturally very reserved, but by degrees she has come talk with me
+quite frankly. To-day as we sat together in the nursery, little
+Raymond snatched a toy from Una, who, as usual, yielded to him
+without a frown. I called him to me; he came reluctantly.
+
+"Raymond, dear," I said, "did you ever see papa snatch anything from
+me?"
+
+He smiled, and shook his head.
+
+"Well then, until you see him do it to me, never do it to your
+sister. Men are gentle and polite to women, and little boys should be
+gentle and polite to little girls."
+
+The children ran off to their play, and Helen said,
+
+"Now how different that is from my mother's management with us! She
+always made us girls yield to the boys. They would not have thought
+they could go up to bed unless one of us got a candle for them."
+
+"That, I suppose, is the reason then that Ernest expected me to wait
+upon him after we were married," I replied. "I was a little stiff
+about yielding to him, for besides mother's precepts, I was
+influenced by my father's example. He was so courteous, treating her
+with as much respect as if she were a queen, and yet with as much
+love as if were always a girl. I naturally expected the like from my
+husband."
+
+"You must have been disappointed then," she said.
+
+"Yes, I was. It cost me a good many pouts and tears of which I am now
+ashamed. And Ernest seldom annoys me now with the little neglects
+that I used to make so much of."
+
+"Sometimes I think there are no 'little' neglects," said Helen. "It
+takes less than nothing to annoy us."
+
+"And it takes more than everything to please us!" I cried. "But
+Ernest and I had one stronghold to which we always fled in our
+troublous times, and that was our love for each other. No matter how
+he provoked me by his little heedless ways, I had to forgive him
+because I loved him so. And he had to forgive me my faults for the
+same reason."
+
+"I had no idea husbands and wives loved each other so," said Helen.
+"I thought they got over it as soon as their cares and troubles came
+on, and just jogged on together, somehow."
+
+We both laughed and she went on.
+
+"If I thought I should be as happy as you are, I should be tempted to
+be married myself."
+
+"Ah, I thought your time would come!" I cried.
+
+"Don't ask me any questions," she said, her pretty face growing
+prettier with a bright; warm glow. "Give me advice instead; for
+instance, tell me how I can be sure that if I love a man I shall go
+on loving him through all the wear and tear of married life and how
+can I be sure he can and will go on loving me?"
+
+"Well, then, setting aside the fact that you are both lovable and
+loving, I will say this: Happiness, in other words love, in married
+life is not a mere accident. When the union has been formed, as most
+Christian unions are, by God Himself, it is His intention and His
+will that it shall prove the unspeakable joy of both husband and
+wife, and become more and more so from year to year. But we are
+imperfect creatures, wayward and foolish as little children, horribly
+unreasonable, selfish and willful. We are not capable of enduring the
+shock of finding at every turn that our idol is made of clay, and
+that it is prone to tumble off its pedestal and lie in the dust, till
+we pick it up and set it in its place again. I was struck with
+Ernest's asking in the very first prayer he offered in my presence,
+after our marriage, that God would help us love each other. I felt
+that love was the very foundation on which I was built, and that
+there was no danger that I should ever fall short in giving to my
+husband all he wanted, in full measure. But as he went on day after
+day repeating this prayer, and I naturally made it with him, I came
+to see that this most precious of earthly blessings had been and must
+be God's gift, and that while we both looked at it in that light, and
+felt our dependence on Him for it, we might safely encounter together
+all the assaults made upon us by the world, the flesh, and the devil.
+I believe we owe it to this constant prayer that we have loved each
+other so uniformly and with such growing comfort in each other; so
+that our little discords always have ended in fresh accord, and our
+love has felt conscious of resting on a rock and that that rock was
+the will of God."
+
+"It is plain, then," said Helen, "that you and Ernest are sure of one
+source of happiness as long as you live, whatever vicissitudes you
+may meet with. I thank you so much for what you have said. The fact
+is you have been brought up to carry religion into everything. But I
+was not. My mother was as good as she was lovely, but I think she
+felt and taught us to feel, that we were to put it on as we did our
+Sunday clothes, and to wear it, as we did them, carefully and
+reverently, but with pretty long, grave faces. But you mix everything
+up so, that when I am with you I never know whether you are most like
+or most unlike other people. And your mother is just so."
+
+"But you forget that it is to Ernest I owe my best ideas about
+married life; I don't remember ever talking with my mother or any one
+else on the subject. And as to carrying religion into everything, how
+can one help it if one's religion is a vital part of one's self, not
+a cloak put on to go to church in and hang up out of the way against
+next Sunday?"
+
+Helen laughed. She has the merriest, yet gentlest little laugh one
+can imagine. I long to know who it is that has been so fortunate as
+to touch her heart!
+
+MARCH.-I know now, and glad I am! The sly little puss is purring at
+this moment in James' arms; at least I suppose she is, as I have
+discreetly come up to my room and left them to themselves. So it seems
+I have had all these worries about Lucy for naught. What made her so
+fond of James was simply the fact that a friend of his had looked on
+her with a favorable eye, regarding her as a very proper mother for
+four or five children who are in need of a shepherd. Yes, Lucy is
+going to marry a man so much older than herself, that on a pinch he
+might have been her father. She does it from a sense of duty, she
+says, and to a nature like hers duty may perhaps suffice, and no cry
+of the heart have to be stifled in its performance. We are all so
+happy in the happiness of James and Helen that we are not in the mood
+to criticise Lucy's decision. I have a strange and most absurd envy
+when I think what a good time they are having at this moment
+downstairs, while I sit here alone, vainly wishing I could see more
+of Ernest. Just as if my happiness were not a deeper, more blessed
+one than theirs which must be purged of much dross before it will
+prove itself to be like fine gold. Yes, I suppose I am as happy in my
+dear, precious husband and children as a wife and mother can be in a
+world, which must not be a real heaven lest we should love the land
+we journey through so well as to want to pitch our tents in it
+forever, and cease to look and long for the home whither we are
+bound.
+
+James will be married almost immediately, I suppose, as he sails for
+Syria early in April. How much a missionary and his wife must be to
+each other, when, severing themselves from all they ever loved
+before, they go forth, hand in hand, not merely to be foreigners in
+heathen lands, but to be henceforth strangers in their own should
+they ever return to it!
+
+Helen says, playfully, that she has not a missionary spirit, and is
+not at all sure that she shall go with James. But I don't think that
+he feels very anxious on that point!
+
+MARCH.-It does one's heart good to see how happy they are! And it
+does one's heart good to have one's husband set up an opposition to
+the goings on by behaving like a lover himself.
+
+
+
+Chapter 23
+
+XXIII.
+
+JANUARY 1, 1851
+
+IT is a great while since I wrote that. "God has been just as good as
+ever"; I want to say that before I say another word. But He has
+indeed smitten me very sorely.
+
+While we were in the midst of our rejoicings about James and Helen,
+and the bright future that seemed opening before them, he came home
+one day very ill. Ernest happened to be in and attended to him at
+once. But the disease was, at the very outset, so violent, and raged
+with such absolute fury, that no remedies had any effect. Everything,
+even now, seems confused in my mind. It seems as if there was a
+sudden transition from the most brilliant, joyous health, to a brief
+but fearful struggle for life, speedily followed by the awful mystery
+and stillness of death. Is it possible, I still ask myself, that four
+short days wrought an event whose consequences must run through
+endless years?--Poor mother! Poor Helen!--When it was all over, I
+do not know what to say of mother but that she behaved and quieted
+herself like a weaned child. Her sweet composure awed me; I dared
+not give way to my own vehement, terrible sorrow; in the presence of
+this Christ-like patience, all noisy demonstrations seemed profane. I
+thought no human being was less selfish, more loving than she had
+been for many years, but the spirit that now took possession of her
+flowed into her heart and life directly from that great Heart of
+love, whose depth I had never even begun to sound. There was,
+therefore, something absolutely divine in her aspect, in the tones of
+her voice, in the very smile on her face. We could compare its
+expression to nothing but Stephen, when he, being full of the Holy
+Ghost, looked up steadfastly to heaven and saw the glory of God, and
+Jesus standing on the right hand of God. As soon as James was gone
+Helen came to our home; there was never any discussion about it, she
+came naturally to be one of us. Mother's health, already very frail,
+gradually failed, and encompassed as I was with cares, I could not be
+with her constantly. Helen took the place to her of a daughter, and
+found herself welcomed like one. The atmosphere in which we all lived
+was one which cannot be described; the love for all of us and for
+every living thing that flowed in mother's words and tones passed all
+knowledge. The children's little joys and sorrows interested her
+exactly as if she was one of themselves; they ran to her with every
+petty grievance, and every new pleasure. During the time she lived
+with us she had won many warm friends, particularly among the poor
+and the suffering. As her strength would no longer allow her to go to
+them, those who could do so came to her, and I was struck to see she
+had ceased entirely from giving counsel, and now gave nothing but the
+most beautiful, tender compassion and sympathy. I saw that she was
+failing, but flattered myself that her own serenity and our care
+would prolong her life still for many years. I longed to have my
+children become old enough to fully appreciate her sanctified
+character; and I thought she would gradually fade away and be set
+free,
+
+    As light winds wandering through groves of bloom,
+    Detach the delicate blossoms from the tree.
+
+But God's thoughts are not as our thoughts not His ways as our ways.
+Her feeble body began to suffer from the rudest assaults of pain; day
+and night, night and day, she lived through a martyrdom in which what
+might have been a lifetime of suffering was concentrated into a few
+months. To witness these sufferings was like the sundering of joints
+and marrow, and once, only once, thank God! my faith in Him staggered
+and reeled to and fro. "How can He look down on such agonies?" I
+cried in my secret soul; "is this the work of a God of love, of
+mercy?" Mother seemed to divine my thoughts, for she took my hand
+tenderly in hers and said, with great difficulty:
+
+"Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him. He is just as good as
+ever." And she smiled. I ran away to Ernest, crying, "Oh, is there
+nothing you can do for her?"
+
+"What should a poor mortal do where Christ has done so much, my
+darling?" he said, taking me in his arms. "Let us stand aside and see
+the glory of God, with our shoes from off our feet." But he went to
+her with one more desperate effort to relieve her, yet in vain.
+
+Mrs. Embury, of whom mother was fond, and who is always very kind
+when we are in trouble, came in just then, and after looking on a
+moment in tears she said to me:
+
+"God knows whom He can trust! He would not lay His hand thus on all
+His children."
+
+Those few words quieted me. Yes, God knows. And now it is all over.
+My precious, precious mother has been a saint in heaven more than two
+years, and has forgotten all the battles she fought on earth, and all
+her sorrows and all her sufferings in the presence of her Redeemer.
+She knew that she was going, and the last words she uttered-and they
+were spoken with somewhat of the playful, quaint manner in which she
+had spoken all her life, and with her own bright smile-still sound in
+my ears:
+
+"I have given God a great deal of trouble, but He is driving me into
+pasture now!"
+
+And then, with her cheek on her hand, she fell asleep, and slept on,
+till just at sundown she awoke to find herself in the green pasture,
+the driving all over for ever and ever.
+
+Who by searching can find out God? My dear father entered heaven
+after a prosperous life path wherein he was unconscious of a pang,
+and beloved James went bright and fresh and untarnished by conflict
+straight to the Master's feast. But what a long lifetime of
+bereavement, sorrow, and suffering was my darling mother's pathway to
+glory!
+
+Surely her felicity must be greater than theirs, and the crown she
+has won by such a struggle must be brighter than the stars! And this
+crown she is even now, while I sit here choked with tears, casting
+joyfully at the feet of her Saviour!
+
+My sweet sister, my precious little Helen, still nestles in our
+hearts and in our home. Martha made one passionate appeal to her to
+return to her, but Ernest interfered:
+
+"Let her stay with Katy," he said. "James would have chosen to have
+her with the one human being like himself."
+
+Does he then think me, with all my faults, the languor of frail
+health, and the cares and burdens of life weighing upon me, enough
+like that sparkling, brave boy to be of use and comfort to dear
+Helen? I take courage at the thought and rouse myself afresh, to bear
+on with fidelity and patience. My steadfast aim now is to follow in
+my mother's footsteps; to imitate her cheerfulness, her benevolence,
+her bright, inspiring ways, and never to rest till in place of my
+selfish nature I become as full of Christ's love as she became. I am
+glad she is at last relieved from the knowledge of all my cares, and
+though I often and often yearn to throw myself into her arms and pour
+out my cares and trials into her sympathizing ears, I would not have
+her back for all the world. She has got away from all the turmoil and
+suffering of life; let her stay!
+
+The scenes of sorrow through which we have been passing have brought
+Ernest nearer to me than ever, and I can see that this varied
+discipline has softened and sweetened his character. Besides, we have
+modified each other. Ernest is more demonstrative, more attentive to
+those little things that make the happiness of married life, and I am
+less childish, less vehement--I wish I could say less selfish, but
+here I seem to have come to a standstill. But I do understand
+Ernest's trials in his profession far better than I did, and can feel
+and show some sympathy in them. Of course the life of a physician is
+necessarily one of self-denial, spent as it is amid scenes of
+suffering and sorrow, which he is often powerless to alleviate. But
+there is besides the wear and tear of years of poverty; his bills are
+disputed or allowed to run on year after year unnoticed; he is often
+dismissed because he cannot put himself in the place of Providence
+and save life, and a truly grateful, generous patient is almost an
+unknown rarity. I do not speak of these things to complain of them. I
+suppose they are a necessary part of that whole providential plan by
+which God moulds and fashions and tempers the human soul, just as my
+petty, but incessant household cares are. If I had nothing to do but
+love my husband and children and perform for them, without let or
+hindrance, the sweet ideal duties of wife and mother, how content I
+should be to live always in this world! But what would become of me
+if I were not called, in the pursuit of these duties and in contact
+with real life, to bear "restless nights, ill-health, unwelcome news,
+the faults of servants, contempt, ingratitude of friends, my own
+failings, lowness of spirits, the struggle in overcoming my
+corruption, and a score of kindred trials!"
+
+Bishop Wilson charges us to bear all these things "as unto God," and
+"with the greatest privacy." How seldom I have met them save as lions
+in my way, that I would avoid if I could, and how I have tormented my
+friends by tedious complaints about them! Yet when compared with the
+great tragedies of suffering I have both witnessed and suffered, how
+petty they seem!
+
+Our household, bereft of mother's and James' bright presence, now
+numbers just as many members as it did before they left us. Another
+angel has flown into it, though not on wings, and I have four darling
+children, the baby, who can hardly be called a baby now, being nearly
+two years old. My hands and my heart are full, but two of the
+children go to school, and that certainly makes my day's work easier.
+
+The little things are happier for having regular employment, and we
+are so glad to meet each other again after the brief separation! I
+try to be at home when it is time to expect them, for I love to hear
+the eager voices ask, in chorus, the moment the door opens: "Is mamma
+at home?" Helen has taken Daisy to sleep with her, which after so
+many years of ups and downs at night, now with restless babies, now
+to answer the bell when Ernest is out, is a great relief to me. Poor
+Helen! She has never recovered her cheerfulness since James' death.
+It has crushed her energies and left her very sorrowful. This is
+partly owing to a soft and tender nature, easily borne down and
+overwhelmed, partly to what seems an almost constitutional inability
+to find rest in God's will. She assents to all we say to her about
+submission, in a sweet, gentle way, and then comes the invariable,
+mournful wail, "But it was so unexpected! It came so suddenly!" But
+I love the little thing, and her affection for us all is one of our
+greatest comforts.
+
+Martha is greatly absorbed in her own household, its cares and its
+pleasures. She brings her little Underhills to see us occasionally,
+when they put my children quite out of countenance by their
+consciousness of the fine clothes they wear, and their knowledge of
+the world. Even I find it hard not to feel abashed in the presence of
+so much of the sort of wisdom in which I am lacking. As to Lucy she
+is exactly in her sphere: the calm dignity with which she reigns in
+her husband's house, and the moderation and self-control with which
+she guides his children, are really instructive. She has a baby of
+her own, and though it acts just like other babies and kicks,
+scratches, pulls and cries when it is washed and dressed, she goes
+through that process with a serenity and deliberation that I envy
+with all my might. Her predecessor in the nursery was all nerve and
+brain, and has left four children made of the same material behind
+her. But their wild spirits on one day, and their depression and
+languor on the next, have no visible effect upon her. Her influence
+is always quieting; she tones down their vehemence with her own calm
+decision and practical good sense. It is amusing to see her seated
+among those four little furies, who love each other in such a
+distracted way that somebody's feelings are always getting hurt, and
+somebody always crying. By a sort of magnetic influence she heals
+these wounds immediately, and finds some prosaic occupation as an
+antidote to these poetical moods. I confess that I am instructed and
+reproved whenever I go to see her, and wish I were more like her.
+
+But there is no use in trying to engraft an opposite nature on one's
+own. What I am, that I must be, except as God changes me into His own
+image. And everything brings me back to that, as my supreme desire. I
+see more and more that I must be myself what I want my children to
+be, and that I cannot make myself over even for their sakes. This
+must be His work, and I wonder that it goes on so slowly; that all
+the disappointments, sorrows, sicknesses I have passed through, have
+left me still selfish, still full of imperfections.
+
+MARCH 5, 1852.-This is the sixth anniversary of James' death.
+Thinking it all over after I went to bed last night, his sickness,
+his death, and the weary months that followed for mother, I could not
+get to sleep till long past midnight. Then Una woke, crying with the
+earache, and I was up till nearly daybreak with her, poor child. I
+got up jaded and depressed, almost ready to faint under the burden of
+life, and dreading to meet Helen, who is doubly sad on these
+anniversaries. She came down to breakfast dressed as usual in deep
+mourning, and looking as spiritless as I felt. The prattle of the
+children relieved the sombre silence maintained by the rest of us,
+each of whom acted depressingly on the others. How things do flash
+into one's mind. These words suddenly came to mine, as we sat so
+gloomily at the table God had spread for us, and which He had
+enlivened by the four young faces around it--
+
+    "Why should the children of a King
+     Go mourning all their days?"
+
+Why, indeed? Children of a King? I felt grieved that I was so intent
+on my own sorrows as to lose sight of my relationship to Him. And
+then I asked myself what I could do to make the day less wearisome
+and sorrowful to Helen. She came, after a time, with her work to my
+room. The children took their good-by kisses and went off to school;
+Ernest took his, too, and set forth on his day's work, while Daisy
+played quietly about the room.
+
+"Helen, dear," I ventured at last to begin "I want you to do me a
+favor to-day."
+
+"Yes," she said, languidly.
+
+"I want you to go to see Mrs. Campbell. This is the day for her
+beef-tea, and she will be looking out for one of us.
+
+"You must not ask me to go to-day," Helen answered.
+
+"I think I must, dear. When other springs of comfort dry up, there is
+one always left to us. And that; as mother often said, is
+usefulness."
+
+"I do try to be useful," she said.
+
+"Yes, you are very kind to me and to the children. If you were my own
+sister you could not do more. But these little duties do not relieve
+that aching void in your heart which yearns so for relief."
+
+"No," she said, quickly, "I have no such yearning. I just want to
+settle down as I am now."
+
+"Yes, I suppose that is the natural tendency of sorrow. But there is
+great significance in the prayer for 'a heart at leisure from itself,
+to soothe and sympathize.'"
+
+"Oh, Katy!" she said, "you don't know, you can't know, how I feel.
+Until James began to love me so I did not know there was such a love
+as that in the world. You know our family is different from yours.
+And it is so delightful to be loved. Or rather it was!"
+
+"Don't say was," I said. "You know we all love you dearly, dearly"
+
+"Yes, but not as James did!"
+
+"That is true. It was foolish in me to expect to console you by such
+suggestions. But to go back to Mrs. Campbell. She will sympathize
+with you, if you will let her, as very few can, for she has lost both
+husband and children."
+
+"Ah, but she had a husband for a time, at least. It is not as if he
+were snatched away before they had lived together."
+
+If anybody else had said this I should have felt that it was out of
+mere perverseness. But dear little Helen is not perverse; she is
+simply overburdened.
+
+"I grant that your disappointment was greater than hers," I went on.
+"But the affliction was not. Every day that a husband and wife walk
+hand in hand together upon earth makes of the twain more and more one
+flesh. The selfish element which at first formed so large a part of
+their attraction to each other disappears, and the union becomes so
+pure and beautiful as to form a fitting type of the union of Christ
+and His church. There is nothing else on earth like it."
+
+Helen sighed.
+
+"I find it hard to believe," she said, "there can be anything more
+delicious than the months in which James and I were so happy
+together."
+
+"Suffering together would have brought you even nearer," I replied.
+"Dear Helen, I am very sorry for you; I hope you feel that, even
+when, according to my want, I fall into arguments, as if one could
+argue a sorrow away!"
+
+"You are so happy," she answered. "Ernest loves you so dearly, and is
+so proud of you, and you have such lovely children! I ought not to
+expect you to sympathize perfectly with my loneliness."
+
+"Yes, I am happy," I said, after a pause; "but you must own, dear,
+that I have had my sorrows, too. Until you become a mother yourself,
+you cannot comprehend what a mother can suffer, not merely for
+herself, in losing her children, but in seeing their sufferings. I
+think I may say of my happiness that it rests on something higher and
+deeper than even Ernest and my children."
+
+"And what is that?"
+
+The will of God, the sweet will of God. If He should take them all
+away, I might still possess a peace which would flow on forever. I
+know this partly from my own experience and partly from that of
+others. Mrs. Campbell says that the three months that followed the
+death of her first child were the happiest she had ever known. Mrs.
+Wentworth, whose husband was snatched from her almost without
+warning, and while using expressions of affection for her such as a
+lover addresses to his bride, said to me, with tears rolling down her
+cheeks, yet with a smile, 'I thank my God and Saviour that He has not
+forgotten and passed me by, but has counted me worthy to bear this
+sorrow for His sake.' And hear this passage from the life of Wesley,
+which I lighted on this morning:
+
+"He visited one of his disciples, who was ill in bed and after having
+buried seven of her family in six months, had just heard that the
+eighth, her husband, whom she dearly loved, had been cast away at
+sea. 'I asked her,' he says, 'do you not fret at any of those
+things?' She says, with a lovely smile, 'Oh, no! how can I fret at
+anything which is the will of God? Let Him take all beside, He has
+given me Himself. I love, I praise Him every moment.'"
+
+"Yes," Helen objected, "I can imagine people as saying such things in
+moments of excitement; but afterwards, they have hours of terrible
+agony."
+
+"They have 'hours of terrible agony,' of course. God's grace does not
+harden our hearts, and make them proof against suffering, like coats
+of mail. They can all say, 'Out of the depths have I cried unto
+Thee,' and it is they alone who have been down into the depths, and
+had rich experience of what God could be to His children there, who
+can utter such testimonials to His honor, as those I have just
+repeated."
+
+"Katy," Helen suddenly asked, "do you always submit to God's will
+thus?"
+
+"In great things I do," I said. "What grieves me is that I am
+constantly forgetting to recognize God's hand in the little every-day
+trials of life, and instead of receiving them as from Him, find fault
+with the instruments by which He sends them. I can give up my child,
+my only brother, my darling mother without a word; but to receive
+every tire some visitor as sent expressly and directly to weary me by
+the Master Himself; to meet every negligence on the part of the
+servants as His choice for me at the moment; to be satisfied and
+patient when Ernest gets particularly absorbed in his books because
+my Father sees that little discipline suitable for me at the time;
+all this I have not fully learned."
+
+"All you say discourages me," said Helen, in a tone of deep
+dejection. "Such perfection was only meant for a few favored ones,
+and I do not dare so much as to aim at it. I am perfectly sure that I
+must be satisfied with the low state of grace I am in now and always
+have been."
+
+She was about to leave me, but I caught her hand as she would have
+passed me, and made one more attempt to reach her poor, weary soul.
+
+"But are you satisfied, dear Helen?" I asked, as tenderly as I would
+speak to a little sick child. "Surely you crave happiness, as every
+human soul does!"
+
+"Yes, I crave it," she replied, "but God has taken it from me.
+
+"He has taken away your earthly happiness, I know, but only to
+convince you what better things He has in store for you. Let me read
+you a letter which Dr. Cabot wrote me many years ago, but which has
+been an almost constant inspiration to me ever since."
+
+She sat down, resumed her work again, and listened to the letter in
+silence. As I came to its last sentence the three children rushed in
+from school, at least the boys did, and threw themselves upon me like
+men assaulting a fort. I have formed the habit of giving myself
+entirely to them at the proper moment, and now entered into their
+frolicsome mood as joyously as if I had never known a sorrow or lost
+an hour's sleep. At last they went off to their play-room, and Una
+settled down by my side to amuse Daisy, when Helen began again.
+
+"I should like to read that letter myself," she said. "Meanwhile I
+want to ask you one question. What are you made of that you can turn
+from one thing to another like lightning? Talking one moment as if
+life depended on your every word, and then frisking about with those
+wild boys as if you were a child yourself?"
+
+I saw Una look up curiously, to hear my answer, as I replied,
+
+"I have always aimed at this flexibility. I think a mother,
+especially, ought to learn to enter into the gayer moods of her
+children at the very moment when her own heart is sad. And it may be
+as religious an act for her to romp with them at the time as to pray
+with them at another."
+
+Helen now went away to her room with Dr. Cabot's letter, which I
+silently prayed might bless her as it had blessed me. And then a
+jaded, disheartened mood came over me that made me feel that all I
+had been saying to her was but as sounding brass and a tinkling
+cymbal, since my life and my professions did not correspond. Hitherto
+my consciousness of imperfection has made me hesitate to say much to
+Helen. Why are we so afraid of those who live under the same roof
+with us? It must be the conviction that those who daily see us acting
+in a petty, selfish, trifling way, must find it hard to conceive that
+our prayers and our desires take a wider and higher aim. Dear little
+Helen! May the ice once broken remain broken forever.
+
+
+
+Chapter 24
+
+XXIV.
+
+MARCH 20.
+
+HELEN returned Dr. Cabot's letter in silence this morning, but,
+directly after breakfast, set forth to visit Mrs. Campbell, with the
+little bottle of beef-tea in her hands, which ought to have gone
+yesterday. I had a busy day before me; the usual Saturday baking and
+Sunday dinner to oversee, the children's lessons for to-morrow to
+superintend and hear them repeat, their clean clothes to lay out, and
+a basket of stockings to mend. My mind was somewhat distracted with
+these cares, and I found it a little difficult to keep on with my
+morning devotions in spite of them. But I have learned, at least, to
+face and fight such distractions, instead of running away from them
+as I used to do. My faith in prayer, my resort to it, becomes more
+and more the foundation of my life, and I believe, with one wiser and
+better than myself, that nothing but prayer stands between my soul
+and the best gifts of God; in other words, that I can and shall get
+what I ask for.
+
+I went down into the kitchen, put on my large baking apron, and began
+my labors; of course the door-bell rang, and a poor woman was
+announced. It is very sweet to follow Fenelon's counsel and give
+oneself to Christ in all these interruptions; but this time I said,
+"oh, dear!" before I thought. Then I wished I hadn't, and went up,
+with a cheerful face at any rate, to my unwelcome visitor, who proved
+to be one of my aggravating poor folks-a great giant of a woman, in
+perfect health, and with a husband to support her if he will. I told
+her that I could do no more for her; she answered me rudely, and kept
+urging her claims. I felt ruffled; why should my time be thus
+frittered away, I asked myself. At last she went off, abusing me in a
+way that chilled my heart. I could only beg God to forgive her, and
+return to my work, which I had hardly resumed when Mrs. Embury sent
+for a pattern I had promised to lend her. Off came my apron, and up
+two pairs of stairs I ran; after a long search it came to light. Work
+resumed; door-bell again. Aunty wanted the children to come to an
+early dinner. Going to Aunty's is next to going to Paradise to them.
+Every thing was now hurry and flurry; I tried to be patient; and not
+to fret their temper by undue attention to nails, ears, and other
+susceptible parts of the human frame, but after it was all over, and
+I had kissed all the sweet, dear faces good-by, and returned to the
+kitchen, I felt sure that I had not been the perfect mother I want to
+be in all these little emergencies-yes, far from it. Bridget had let
+the milk I was going to use boil over, and finally burn up. I was
+annoyed and irritated, and already tired, and did not see how I was
+to get more, as Mary was cleaning the silver (to be sure, there is
+not much of it), and had other extra Saturday work to do. I thought
+Bridget might offer to run to the corner for it, though it isn't her
+business, but she is not obliging, and seemed as sulky as if I had
+burned the milk, not she. "After all," I said to myself, "what does
+it signify, if Ernest gets no dessert? It isn't good for him, and how
+much precious time is wasted over just this one thing?" However, I
+reflected, that arbitrarily refusing to indulge him in this respect
+is not exactly my mission as his wife; he is perfectly well, and
+likes his little luxuries as well as other people do. So I humbled my
+pride and asked Bridget to go for the milk, which she did, in a lofty
+way of her own. While she was gone the marketing came home, and I had
+everything to dispose of. Ernest had sent home some apples, which
+plainly said, "I want some apple pie, Katy." I looked nervously at
+the clock, and undertook to gratify him. Mary came down, crying, to
+say that her mother, who lived in Brooklyn, was very sick; could she
+go to see her? I looked at the clock once more; told her she should
+go, of course, as soon as lunch was over; this involved my doing all
+her absence left undone.
+
+At last I got through with the kitchen, the Sunday dinner being well
+under way, and ran upstairs to put away the host of little garments
+the children had left when they took their flight, and to make myself
+presentable at lunch. Then I began to be uneasy lest Ernest should
+not be punctual, and Mary be delayed; but he came just as the clock
+struck one. I ran joyfully to meet him, very glad now that I had
+something good to give him. We had just got through lunch, and I was
+opening my mouth to tell Mary she might go, when the door-bell rang
+once more, and Mrs. Fry, of Jersey City, was announced. I told Mary
+to wait till I found whether she had lunched or not; no, she hadn't;
+had come to town to see friends off, was half famished, and would I
+do her the favor, etc., etc. She had a fashionable young lady with
+her, a stranger to me, as well as a Miss Somebody else, from Albany,
+whose name I did not catch. I apologized for having finished lunch.
+Mrs. Fry said all they wanted was a cup of tea and a bit of bread and
+butter, nothing else, dear; now don't put yourself out.
+
+"Now be bright and animated, and like yourself," she whispered, "for
+I have brought these girls here on purpose to hear you talk, and they
+are prepared to fall in love with you on the spot."
+
+This speech sufficed to shut my mouth.
+
+Mary had to get ready for these unexpected guests, whose appetites
+proved equal to a raid on a good many things besides bread and
+butter. Mrs. Fry said, after she had devoured nearly half a loaf of
+cake, that she would really try to eat a morsel more, which Ernest
+remarked, dryly, was a great triumph of mind over matter. As they
+talked and laughed and ate leisurely on, Mary stood looking the
+picture of despair. At last I gave her a glance that said she might
+go, when a new visitor was announced--Mrs. Winthrop, from Brooklyn,
+one of Ernest's patients a few years ago, when she lived here. She
+professed herself greatly indebted to him, and said she had come at
+this hour because she should make sure of seeing him. I tried to
+excuse him, as I knew he would be thankful to have me do, but no, see
+him she must; he was her "pet doctor," he had such "sweet, bedside
+manners," and "I am such a favorite with him, you know!"
+
+Ernest did not receive his "favorite" with any special warmth; but
+invited her out to lunch and gallanted her to the table we had just
+left. Just like a man! Poor Mary! she had to fly round and get up
+what she could; Mrs. Winthrop devoted herself to Ernest with a
+persistent ignoring of me that I thought rude and unwomanly. She
+asked if he had read a certain book; he had not; she then said, "I
+need not ask, then, if Mrs. Elliott has done so? These charming
+dishes, which she gets up so nicely, must absorb all her time." "Of
+course," replied Ernest. "But she contrives to read the reports of
+all the murders, of which the newspapers are full."
+
+Mrs. Winthrop took this speech literally, drew away her skirts from
+me, looked at me through her eye-glass, and said, "Yes?" At last she
+departed. Helen came home, and Mary went. I gave Helen an account of
+my morning; she laughed heartily, and it did me good to hear that
+musical sound once more.
+
+"It is nearly five o'clock," I said, as we at last had restored
+everything to order, "and this whole day has been frittered away in
+the veriest trifles. It isn't living to live so. Who is the better
+for my being in the world since six o'clock this morning?"
+
+"I am for one," she said, kissing my hot cheeks; "and you have given
+a great deal of pleasure to several persons. Your and Ernest's
+hospitality is always graceful. I admire it in you both; and this is
+one of the little ways, not to be despised, of giving enjoyment." It
+was nice in her to say that, it quite rested me.
+
+At the dinner-table Ernest complimented me on my good housekeeping.
+
+"I was proud of my little wife at lunch" he said.
+
+"And yet you said that outrageous thing about my reading about
+nothing but murders!" I said.
+
+"Oh, well, you understood it," he said, laughingly.
+
+"But that dreadful Mrs. Winthrop took it literally."
+
+"What do we care for Mrs. Winthrop?" he returned. "If you could have
+seen the contrast between you two in my eyes!"
+
+After all, one must take life as it comes, its homely details are so
+mixed up with its sweet charities, and loves, and friendships that
+one is forced to believe that God has joined them together and does
+not will that they should be put asunder. It is something that my
+husband has been satisfied with his wife and his home to-day; that
+does me good.
+
+MARCH 30.-A stormy day and the children home from school, and no
+little frolicking and laughing going on. It must, be delightful to
+feel well and strong while one's children are young, there is so much
+to do for them. I do it; but no one can tell the effort, it costs me.
+What a contrast there is between their vitality and the languor under
+which I suffer! When their noise became intolerable, I proposed to
+read to them; of course they made ten times as much clamor of
+pleasure and of course they leaned on me, ground their elbows into my
+lap, and tired me all out. As I sat with this precious little group
+about me, Ernest opened the door, looked in, gravely and without a
+word, and instantly disappeared. I felt uneasy and asked him, this
+evening, why he looked so. Was I indulging the children too much, or
+what was it? He took me into his arms and said:
+
+"My precious wife, why will you torment yourself with such fancies?
+My very heart was yearning over you at that moment, as it did the
+first time I saw you surrounded by your little class at
+Sunday-school, years ago, and I was asking myself why God had given
+me such a wife, and my children such a mother."
+
+Oh, I am glad I have got this written down! I will read it over when
+the sense of my deficiencies overwhelms me, while I ask God why He
+has given me such a patient, forbearing husband.
+
+APRIL 1.-This has been a sad day to our church. Our dear Dr. Cabot
+has gone to his eternal home, and left us as sheep without a
+shepherd.
+
+His death was sudden at the last and found us all unprepared for it.
+But my tears of sorrow are mingled with tears of joy. His heart had
+long been in heaven, he was ready to go at a moment's warning; never
+was a soul so constantly and joyously on the wing as his. Poor Mrs.
+Cabot! She is left very desolate, for all their children are married
+and settled at a distance. But she bears this sorrow like one who has
+long felt herself a pilgrim and a stranger on earth. How strange that
+we ever forget that we are all such!
+
+APRIL 16.-The desolate pilgrimage was not long. Dear Mrs. Cabot was
+this day laid away by the side of her beloved husband, and it is
+delightful to think of them as not divided by death, but united by it
+in a complete and eternal union.
+
+I never saw a husband and wife more tenderly attached to each other,
+and this is a beautiful close to their long and happy married life. I
+find it hard not to wish and pray that I may as speedily follow my
+precious husband, should God call him away first. But it is not for
+me to choose.
+
+How I shall miss these faithful friends, who, from my youth up, have
+been my stay and my staff in the house of my pilgrimage! Almost all
+the disappointments and sorrows of my life have had their Christian
+sympathy, particularly the daily, wasting solicitude concerning my
+darling Una, for they to watched for years over as delicate a flower,
+and saw it fade and die. Only those who have suffered thus can
+appreciate the heart-soreness through which, no matter how outwardly
+cheerful I may be, I am always passing. But what then! Have I not ten
+thousand times made this my prayer, that in the words of Leighton, my
+will might become, "identical with God's will."
+
+"And shall He not take me at my word?" Just as I was writing these
+words, my canary burst forth with a song so joyous that a song was
+put also into my mouth. Something seemed to say, this captive sings
+in his cage because it has never known liberty, and cannot regret a
+lost freedom. So the soul of my child, limited by the restrictions of
+a feeble body, never having known the gladness of exuberant health,
+may sing songs that will enliven and cheer. Yes, and does sing them!
+What should we do without her gentle, loving presence, whose frailty
+calls forth our tenderest affections and whose sweet face makes
+sunshine in the shadiest places! I am sure that the boys are truly
+blessed by having a sister always at home to welcome them, and that
+their best manliness is appealed to by her helplessness.
+
+What this child is to me I cannot tell. And yet, if the skillful and
+kind Gardener should house this delicate plant before frosts come,
+should I dare to complain?
+
+
+
+Chapter 25
+
+XXV.
+
+MAY 4
+
+Miss CLIFFORD came to lunch with us on Wednesday. Her remarkable
+restoration to health has attracted a good deal of attention, and has
+given Ernest a certain reputation which does not come amiss to him.
+Not that he is ambitious; a more unworldly man does not live; but his
+extreme reserve and modesty have obscured the light that is now
+beginning to shine. We all enjoyed Miss Clifford's visit. She is one
+of the freshest, most original creatures I ever met with, and kept us
+all laughing with her quaint speeches, long after every particle of
+lunch had disappeared from the table. But this mobile nature turns to
+the serious side of life with marvelous ease and celerity, as perhaps
+all sound ones ought to do. I took her up to my room where my
+work-basket was, and Helen followed, with hers.
+
+"I have brought something to read to you, dear Mrs. Elliott," Miss
+Clifford began, the moment we had seated ourselves, "which I have
+just lighted on, and I am sure you will like. A nobleman writes to
+Fenelon asking certain questions, and a part of these questions, with
+the replies, I want to enjoy with you, as they cover a good deal of
+the ground we have often discussed together":
+
+"I.-How shall I offer my purely indifferent actions to God; walks,
+visits made and received, dress, little proprieties, such as washing
+the hands, etc.', the reading of books of history, business with
+which I am charged for my friends, other amusements, such as
+shopping, having clothes made, and equipages. I want to have some
+sort of prayer, or method of offering each of these things to God.
+
+"REPLY.-The most indifferent actions cease to be such, and become
+good as soon as one performs them with the intention of conforming
+one's self in them to the will of God. They are often better and
+purer than certain actions which appear more virtuous: 1st, because
+they are less of our own choice and more in the order of Providence
+when one is obliged to perform them; 2d, because they are simpler and
+less exposed to vain complaisance; 3d, because if one yields to them
+with moderation, one finds in them more of death to one's
+inclinations than in certain acts of fervor in which self-love
+mingles; finally, because these little occasions occur more
+frequently, and furnish a secret occasion for continually making
+every moment profitable.
+
+"It is not necessary to make great efforts nor acts of great
+reflection, in order to offer what are called indifferent actions. It
+is enough to lift the soul one instant to God, to make a simple
+offering of it. Everything which God wishes us to do, and which
+enters into the course of occupation suitable to our position, can
+and ought to be offered to God; nothing is unworthy of Him but sin.
+When you feel that an action cannot be offered to God, conclude that
+it does not become a Christian; it is at least necessary to suspect
+it, and seek light concerning it. I would not have a special prayer
+for each of these the elevation of the heart at the moment suffices.
+
+"As for visits, commissions and the like, as there is danger of
+following one's own taste too much, I would add to this elevating of
+the heart a prayer to moderate myself and use precaution.
+
+"II.-In prayer I cannot fix my mind, or I have intervals of time when
+it is elsewhere and it is often distracted for a long time before I
+perceive it. I want to find some means of becoming its master.
+
+"REPLY.-Fidelity in following the rules that have been given you,
+and in recalling your mind every time you perceive its distraction,
+will gradually give you the grace of being more recollected.
+Meanwhile bear your involuntary distractions with patience and
+humility; you deserve nothing better. Is it surprising that
+recollection is difficult to a man so long dissipated and far from
+God?
+
+"III.-I wish to know if it is best to record, on my tablets, the
+faults and the sins I have committed, in order not to run the risk of
+forgetting them. I excite in myself to repentance for my faults as
+much as I can; but I have never felt any real grief on account of
+them. When I examine myself at night, I see persons far more perfect
+than I complain of more sin: as for me, I seek, I find nothing; and
+yet it is impossible there should not be many points on which to
+implore pardon every day of my life.
+
+"REPLY.-You should examine yourself every night, but simply and
+briefly. In the disposition to which God has brought you, you will
+not voluntarily commit any considerable fault without remembering and
+reproaching yourself for it. As to little faults, scarcely perceived,
+even if you sometimes forget them, this need not make you uneasy.
+
+"As to lively grief on account of your sins, it is not necessary. God
+gives it when it pleases Him. True and essential conversion of the
+heart consists in a full will to sacrifice all to God. What I call
+full will is a fixed immovable disposition of the will to resume none
+of the voluntary affections which may alter the purity of the love to
+God and to abandon itself to all the crosses which it will--perhaps--be
+necessary to bear, in order to accomplish the will of God always
+and in all things. As to sorrow for sin, when one has it, one ought
+to return thanks for it; when one perceives it to be wanting, one
+should humble one's self peacefully before God without trying to
+excite it by vain efforts.
+
+"You find in your self-examination fewer faults than persons more
+advanced and more perfect do; it is because your interior light is
+still feeble. It will increase, and the view of your infidelities
+will increase in proportion. It suffices, without making yourself
+uneasy, to try to be faithful to the degree of light you possess, and
+to instruct yourself by reading and meditation. It will not do to try
+to forestall the grace that belongs to a more advanced period. It
+would only serve to trouble and discourage you, and even to exhaust
+you by continual anxiety; the time that should be spent in loving God
+would be given to forced returns upon yourself, which secretly
+nourish self-love.
+
+"IV.---In my prayers my mind has difficulty in finding anything to
+say to God. My heart is not in it, or it is inaccessible to the
+thoughts of my mind.
+
+"REPLY.-It is not necessary to say much to God. Oftentimes one does
+not speak much to a friend whom one is delighted to see; one looks at
+him with pleasure; one speaks certain short words to him which are
+mere expressions of feeling. The mind has no part in them, or next to
+none; one keeps repeating the same words. It is not so much a variety
+of thoughts that one seeks in intercourse with a friend, as a certain
+repose and correspondence of heart. It is thus we are with God, who
+does not disdain to be our tenderest, most cordial, most familiar,
+most intimate friend. A word, a sigh, a sentiment, says all to God;
+it is not always necessary to have transports of sensible tenderness;
+a will all naked and dry, without life, without vivacity, without
+pleasure, is often purest in the sight of God. In fine, it is
+necessary to content one's self with giving to Him what He gives it
+to give, a fervent heart when it is fervent, a heart firm and
+faithful in its aridity, when He deprives it of sensible fervor. It
+does not always depend on you to feel; but it is necessary to wish to
+feel. Leave it to God to choose to make you feel sometimes, in order
+to sustain your weakness and infancy in Christian life; sometimes
+weaning you from that sweet and consoling sentiment which is the milk
+of babes, in order to humble you, to make you grow, and to make you
+robust in the violent exercise of faith, by causing you to sweat the
+bread of the strong in the sweat of your brow. Would you only love
+God according as He will make you take pleasure in loving Him? You
+would be loving your own tenderness and feeling, fancying that you
+were loving God. Even while receiving sensible gifts, prepare
+yourself by pure faith for the time when you might be deprived of
+them and you will suddenly succumb if you had only relied on such
+support.
+
+"O forgot to speak of some practices which may, at the beginning,
+facilitate the remembrance of the offering one ought to make to God,
+of all the ordinary acts of the day.
+
+"1. Form the resolution to do so, every morning, and call yourself to
+account in your self-examination at night.
+
+"2. Make no resolutions but for good reasons, either from propriety or
+the necessity of relaxing the mind, etc. Thus, in accustoming one's
+self to retrench the useless little by little, one accustoms one's
+self to offer what is not proper to curtail.
+
+"3. Renew one's self in this disposition whenever one is alone, in
+order to be better prepared to recollect it when in company.
+
+"4. Whenever one surprises one's self in too great dissipation, or in
+speaking too freely of his neighbor, let him collect himself and
+offer to God all the rest of the conversation.
+
+"5. To flee, with confidence, to God, to act according to His will,
+when one enters company, or engages in some occupation which may
+cause one to fall into temptation. The sight of danger ought to warn
+of the need there is to lift the heart toward Him by one who may be
+preserved from it."
+
+We both thanked her as she finished reading, and I begged her to lend
+me the volume that I might make the above copy.
+
+I hope I have gained some valuable hints from this letter, and that I
+shall see more plainly than ever that it is a religion of principle
+that God wants from us, not one of mere feeling.
+
+Helen remarked that she was most struck by the assertion that one
+cannot forestall the graces that belong to a more advanced period.
+She said she had assumed that she ought to experience all that the
+most mature Christian did, and that it rested her to think of God as
+doing this work for her, making repentance, for instance, a free
+gift, not a conquest to be won for one's self.
+
+Miss Clifford said that the whole idea of giving one's self to God in
+such little daily acts as visiting, shopping, and the like, was
+entirely new to her.
+
+"But fancy," she went on, her beautiful face lighted up with
+enthusiasm, "what a blessed life that must be, when the base things
+of this world and things that are despised, are so many links to the
+invisible world and to the things God has chosen!"
+
+"In other words," I said, "the top of the ladder that rests on earth
+reaches to heaven, and we may ascend it as the angels did in Jacob's
+dream."
+
+"And descend too, as they did," Helen put in, despondently.
+
+"Now you shall not speak in that tone," cried Miss Clifford. "Let us
+look at the bright side of life, and believe that God means us to be
+always ascending, always getting nearer to Himself, always learning
+something new about Him, always loving Him better and better. To be
+sure, our souls are sick, and of themselves can't keep 'ever on the
+wing,' but I have had some delightful thoughts of late from just
+hearing the title of a book, 'God's method with the maladies of the
+soul.' It gives one such a conception of the seeming ills of life;
+to think of Him as our Physician, the ills all remedies, the
+deprivations only a wholesome regimen, the losses all gains. Why, as
+I study this individual case and that, see how patiently and
+persistently He tries now this remedy, now that, and how infallibly
+He cures the souls that submit to His remedies, I love Him so! I love
+Him so! And I am so astonished that we are restive under His unerring
+hand! Think how He dealt with me. My soul was sick unto death, sick
+with worldliness, and self-pleasing and folly. There was only one way
+of making me listen to reason, and that was just the way He took. He
+snatched me right out of the world and shut me up in one room,
+crippled, helpless, and alone, and set me to thinking, thinking,
+thinking, till I saw the emptiness and shallowness of all in which I
+had hitherto been involved. And then He sent you and your mother to
+show me the reality of life, and to reveal to me my invisible,
+unknown Physician. Can I love Him with half my heart? Can I be asking
+questions as to how much I am to pay towards the debt I owe Him?"
+
+By this time Helen's work had fallen from her hands and tears were in
+her eyes.
+
+"How I thank you," she said softly, "for what you have said. You have
+interpreted life to me! You have given me a new conception of my God
+and Saviour!"
+
+Miss Clifford seemed quenched and humbled by these words; her
+enthusiasm faded away and she looked at Helen with a deprecatory air
+as she replied:
+
+"Don't say that! I never felt so unfit for anything but to sit at the
+feet of Christ's disciples and learn of them."
+
+Yet I, so many years one of those disciples, been sitting at her
+feet, and had learned of her. Never had I so realized the magnitude
+of the work to be done in this world, nor the power and goodness of
+Him who has undertaken to do it all. I was glad to be alone, to walk
+my room singing praises to Him for every instance in which, as my
+Physician, He had "disappointed my hope and defeated my joys" and
+given me to drink of the cup of sorrow and bereavement.
+
+MAY 24.-I read to Ernest the extract from Fenelon which has made such
+an impression on me.
+
+"Every business man, in short every man leading an active life,
+ought to read that," he said. "We should have a new order of things
+as the result. Instead of fancying that our ordinary daily work was
+one thing and our religion quite another thing, we should transmute
+our drudgery into acts of worship. Instead of going to
+prayer-meetings to get into a 'good frame' we should live in a good
+frame from morning till night, from night till morning, and prayer
+and praise would be only another form for expressing the love and
+faith and obedience we had been exercising amid the pressure of
+business."
+
+"I only wish I had understood this years ago," I said. "I have made
+prayer too much of a luxury, and have often inwardly chafed and
+fretted when the care of my children, at times, made it utterly
+impossible to leave them for private devotion-when they have been
+sick, for instance, or in other like emergencies. I reasoned this
+way: 'Here is a special demand on my patience, and I am naturally
+impatient. I must have time to go away and entreat the Lord to equip
+me for this conflict.' But I see now that the simple act of cheerful
+acceptance of the duty imposed and the solace and support withdrawn
+would have united me more fully to Christ than the highest enjoyment
+of His presence in prayer could."
+
+"Yes, every act of obedience is an act of worship," he said.
+
+"But why don't we learn that sooner? Why do we waste our lives before
+we learn how to live?"
+
+"I am not sure," he returned, "that we do not learn as fast as we are
+willing to learn. God does not force instruction upon us, but when we
+say, as Luther did, 'More light, Lord, more light,'--the light
+comes."
+
+I questioned myself after he had gone as to whether this could be
+true of me. Is there not in my heart some secret reluctance to know
+the truth, lest that knowledge should call to a higher and holier
+life than I have yet lived?
+
+JUNE 2.-I went to see Mrs. Campbell a few days ago, and found, to my
+great joy, that Helen had just been there, and that they had had an
+earnest conversation together. Mrs. Campbell failed a good deal of
+late, and it is not probable we shall have her with us much longer.
+Her every look and word is precious to me when I think of her as one
+who is so soon to enter the unseen world and see our Saviour, and be
+welcomed home by Him. If it is so delightful to be with those who are
+on the way to heaven, what would it be to have fellowship with one
+who had come thence, and could tell us what it is!
+
+She spoke freely about death, and said Ernest had promised to take
+charge of her funeral, and to see that she was buried by the side of
+her husband.
+
+"You see, my dear," she added, with a smile, "though I am expecting
+to be so soon a saint in heaven, I am a human being still, with human
+weaknesses. What can it really matter where this weary old body is
+laid away, when I have done with it, and gone and left it forever?
+And yet I am leaving directions about its disposal!"
+
+I said I was glad that she was still human but that I did not think
+it a weakness to take thought for the abode in which her soul had
+dwelt so long. I saw that she was tired and was coming away, but she
+held me and would not let me go.
+
+"Yes, I am tired," she said, "but what of that? It is only a question
+of days now, and all my tired feelings will be over. Then I shall be
+as young and fresh as ever, and shall have strength to praise and to
+love God as I cannot do now. But before I go I want once more to tell
+you how good He is, how blessed it is to suffer with Him, how
+infinitely happy He has made me in the very hottest heat of the
+furnace. It will strengthen you in your trials to recall this my
+dying testimony. There is no wilderness so dreary but that His love
+can illuminate it, no desolation so desolate but that He can sweeten
+it. I know what I am saying. It is no delusion. I believe that the
+highest, purest happiness is known only to those who have learned
+Christ in sick-rooms, in poverty, in racking suspense and anxiety,
+amid hardships, and at the open grave."
+
+Yes, the radiant face, worn by sickness and suffering, but radiant
+still, said in language yet more unspeakably impressive,--
+
+"To learn Christ, this is life!"
+
+I came into the busy and noisy streets as one descending from the
+mount, and on reaching home found my darling Una very ill in Ernest's
+arms. She had fallen, and injured her head. How I had prayed that God
+would temper the wind to this shorn lamb, and now she had had such a
+fall! We watched over her till far into the night, scarcely speaking
+to each other, but I know by the way in which Ernest held my hand
+clasped in his that her precious life was in danger. He consented at
+last to lie down, but Helen stayed with me. What a night it was! God
+only knows what the human heart can experience in a space of time
+that men call hours. I went over all the past history of the child,
+recalling all her sweet looks and words, and my own secret repining
+at the delicate health that cut her off from so many of the pleasures
+that belong to her age. And the more I thought, the more I clung to
+her, on whom, frail as she is, I was beginning to lean, and whose
+influence in our home I could not think of losing without a shudder.
+Alas, my faith seemed, for a time, to flee, and I see just what a
+poor, weak human being is without it. But before daylight crept into
+my room light from on high streamed into my heart, and I gave even
+this, my ewe-lamb, away, as my free-will offering to God. Could I
+refuse Him my child because she was the very apple of my eye? Nay
+then, but let me give to Him, not what, I value least, but what I
+prize and delight in most. Could I not endure heart-sickness for Him
+who had given His only Son for me! And just as I got to that sweet
+consent to suffer, He who had only lifted the rod to try my faith
+laid it down. My darling opened her eyes and looked at us
+intelligently, and with her own loving smile. But I dared not snatch
+her and press her to my heart; for her sake I must be outwardly calm
+at least.
+
+JUNE 6.-I am at home with my precious Una, all the rest having gone
+to church. She lies peacefully on the bed, sadly disfigured, for the
+time, but Ernest says he apprehends no danger now, and we are a most
+happy, a most thankful household. The children have all been greatly
+moved by the events of the last few days, and hover about their
+sister with great sympathy and tenderness. Where she fell from, or
+how she fell, no one knows; she remembers nothing about it herself,
+and it will always remain a mystery.
+
+This is the second time that this beloved child has been returned to
+us after we had given her away to God.
+
+And as the giving cost us ten-fold more now than it did when she was
+a feeble baby, so we receive her as a fresh gift from our loving
+Father's hand, with ten-fold delight. Ah, we have no excuse for not
+giving ourselves entirely to Him. He has revealed Himself to us in so
+many sorrows and in so many joys; revealed Himself as He doth not
+unto the world!
+
+
+
+Chapter 26
+
+XXVI.
+
+MAY 13.-THIS has been a Sunday to be held in long remembrance. We were
+summoned early this morning to Mrs. Campbell, and have seen her
+joyful release from the fetters that have bound her long. Her loss to
+me is irreparable. But I truly thank God that one more tired traveler
+had a sweet "welcome home." I can minister no longer to her bodily
+wants, and listen to her counsels no more, but she has entered as an
+inspiration into my life, and through all eternity I shall bless God
+that He gave me that faithful, praying friend. How little they know
+who languish in what seems useless sick-rooms, or amid the
+restrictions of frail health, what work they do for Christ by the
+power of saintly living, and by even fragmentary prayers.
+
+Before her words fade out of my memory I want to write down, from
+hasty notes made at the time, her answer to some of the last
+questions I asked her on earth. She had always enjoyed intervals of
+comparative ease, and it was in one of these that I asked her what
+she conceived to be the characteristics of an advanced state of
+grace. She replied, "I think that the mature Christian is always, at
+all times, and in all circumstances, what he was in his best moments
+in the progressive stages of his life. There were seasons, all along
+his course, when he loved God supremely; when he embraced the cross
+joyfully and penitently; when he held intimate communion with Christ,
+and loved his neighbor as himself. But he was always in terror, lest
+under the force of temptation, all this should give place to deadness
+and dullness, when he should chafe and rebel in the hour of trial,
+and judge his fellow-man with a harsh and bitter judgment, and give
+way to angry, passionate emotions. But these fluctuations cease,
+after a time, to disturb his peace. Love to Christ becomes the
+abiding, inmost principle of his life; he loves Him rather for what
+He is, than for what He has done or will do for him individually, and
+God's honor becomes so dear to him that he feels personally wounded
+when that is called in question. And the will of God becomes so dear
+to him that he loves it best when it 'triumphs at his cost.'
+
+"Once he only prayed at set times and seasons, and idolized good
+frames and fervent emotions. Now he prays without ceasing, and
+whether on the mount or down in the depths depends wholly upon His
+Saviour.
+
+"His old self-confidence has now given place to child-like humility
+that will not let him take a step alone, and the sweet peace that is
+now habitual to him combined with the sense of his own imperfections,
+fills him with love to his fellow-man. He hears and believes and
+hopes and endures all things and thinketh no evil. The tones of his
+voice, the very expression of his countenance, become changed, love
+now controlling where human passions held sway. In short, he is not
+only a new creature in Jesus Christ, but the habitual and blessed
+consciousness that this is so."
+
+These words were spoken deliberately and with reflection.
+
+"You have described my mother, just as she was from the moment her
+only son, the last of six, was taken from her," I said, at last. "I
+never quite understood how that final sorrow weaned her, so to say,
+from herself, and made her life all love to God and all love to man.
+But I see it now. Dear Mrs. Campbell, pray for me that I may yet wear
+her mantle!"
+
+She smiled with a significance that said she had already done so, and
+then we parted-parted that she might end her pilgrimage and go to her
+rest-parted that I might pursue mine, I know not how long, nor amid
+how many cares, and sorrows, nor with what weariness and
+heart-sickness-parted to meet again in the presence of Him we love,
+with those who have come out of great tribulation, whose robes have
+been made white in the blood of the Lamb, and who are before the
+throne of God, and serve Him day and night in His temple, to hunger
+no more, neither thirst any more, for the Lamb which is in the midst
+of the throne shall lead them into living fountains of waters; and
+God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.
+
+MAY 25.-We were talking of Mrs. Campbell, and of her blessed life and
+blessed death. Helen said it discouraged and troubled her to see and
+hear such things.
+
+"The last time I saw her when she was able to converse," said she, "I
+told her that when I reflected on my want of submission to God's
+will, I doubted whether I really could be His child. She said, in her
+gentle, sweet way-:
+
+'Would you venture to resist His will, if you could? Would you really
+have your dear James back again in this world, if you could?" 'I would,
+I certainly would,' I said. She returned, 'I sometimes find it a help,
+when dull and cramped in my devotions, to say to myself: Suppose Christ
+should now appear before you, and you could see Him as He appeared to
+His disciples on earth, what would you say to Him? This brings Him near,
+and I say what I would say if He were visibly present. I do the same
+when a new sorrow threatens me. I imagine my Redeemer as coming
+personally to say to me, "For your sake I am a man of sorrows and
+acquainted with grief; now for My sake give me this child, bear this
+burden, submit to this loss." Can I refuse Him? Now, dear, he has really
+come thus to you, and asked you to show your love to Him, your faith in
+Him, by giving Him the most precious of your treasures. If He were here
+at this moment, and offered to restore it to you, would you dare to say,
+"Yea, Lord, I know, far better than Thou dost, what is good for him and
+good for me; I will have him return to me, cost what it may; in this
+world of uncertainties and disappointments I shall be sure of happiness
+in his society, and he will enjoy more here on earth with me than he
+could enjoy in the companionship of saints and angels and of the Lord
+Himself in heaven." Could you dare to say this?' Oh, Katy, what straits
+she drove me into! No, I could not dare to say that!"
+
+"Then, my darling little sister" I cried, "you will give up--this
+struggle? You will let God do what He will with His own?"
+
+"I have to let Him," she replied; "but I submit because I must."
+
+I looked at her gentle, pure face as she uttered these words, and
+could only marvel at the will that had no expression there.
+
+"Tell me," she said, "do you think a real Christian can feel as I do?
+For my part I doubt it. I doubt everything."
+
+"Doubt everything, but believe in Christ," I said. "Suppose, for
+argument's sake, you are not a Christian. You can become one now."
+The color rose in her lovely face; she clasped her hands in a sort of
+ecstasy.
+
+"Yes," she said, "I can."
+
+At last God had sent her the word she wanted.
+
+MAY 28.-Helen came to breakfast this morning in a simple white dress.
+I had not time to tell the children not to allude to it, so they
+began in chorus:
+
+"Why, Aunt Helen! you have put on a white dress!"
+
+"Why, Aunty, how queer you look!"
+
+"Hurrah! if she don't look like other folks!"
+
+She bore it all with her usual gentleness; or rather with a positive
+sweetness that captivated them as her negative patience had never
+done. I said nothing to her, nor did she to me till late in the day,
+when she came to me, and said:
+
+"Katy, God taught you what to say. All these years I have been
+tormenting myself with doubts, as to whether I could be His child
+while so unable to say, Thy will be done. If you had said, 'Why,
+yes, you must be His child, for you professed yourself one a long
+time ago, and ever since have lived like one,' I should have remained
+as wretched as ever. As it is, a mountain has been rolled off, my
+heart. Yes, if I was not His child yesterday, I can become one
+to-day; if I did not love Him then, I can begin now."
+
+I do not doubt that, she was His child, yesterday and last year, and
+years ago. But let her think, what she pleases. A new life is opening
+before her; I believe it is to be a life of entire devotion to God,
+and that out of her sorrow there shall spring up a wondrous joy.
+
+SEPT. 2, Sweet Briar Farm.-Ernest spent Sunday with us, and I have
+just driven him to the station and seen him safely off. Things have
+prospered with us to such a degree that he has been extravagant
+enough to give me the use, for the summer, of a bonnie little nag and
+an antiquated vehicle, and I have learned to drive. To be sure I
+broke one of the shafts of the poor old thing the first time I
+ventured forth alone, and the other day--nearly upset my cargo of
+children in a pond where I was silly enough to undertake to water my
+horse. But Ernest, as usual, had patience with me and begged me to
+spend as much time as possible in driving about with the children. It
+is a new experience, and I enjoy it quite as much as he hoped I
+should. Helen is not with us; she has spent the whole summer with
+Martha; for Martha, poor thing, is suffering terribly from rheumatism
+and is almost entirely helpless. I am so sorry for her, after so many
+years of vigorous health, how hard it must be to endure this pain.
+With this drawback, we have had a delightful summer; not one sick
+day; nor one sick night. With no baby to keep me awake, I sleep
+straight through, as Raymond says, and wake in the morning refreshed
+and cheerful. We shall have to go home soon; how cruel it seems to
+bring up children in a great city! Yet what can be done about it?
+Wherever there are men and women there must be children; what a
+howling wilderness either city or country would be without them!
+
+The only drawback on my felicity is the separation, from Ernest,
+which becomes more painful every year to us both. God has blessed our
+married life; it has had its waves and its billows, but, thanks unto
+Him, it has at last settled down into a calm sea of untroubled peace.
+While I was secretly braiding my dear husband for giving so attention
+to his profession as to neglect me and my children, he was becoming,
+every day, more the ideal of a physician, cool, calm, thoughtful,
+studious, ready to sacrifice his life at any moment in the interests
+of humanity. How often I have mistaken his preoccupied air for
+indifference; how many times I have inwardly accused him of coldness,
+when his whole heart and soul were filled with the grave problem of
+life, aye, and of death likewise.
+
+But we understand each other now, and I am sure that God dealt wisely
+and kindly with us when He brought together two such opposite
+natures. No man of my vehement nature could have borne with me as
+Ernest has done, and if he had married a woman as calm, as
+undemonstrative as himself what a strange home his would have been
+for the nurture of little children? But the heart was in him, and
+only wanted to be waked up, and my life has called forth music from
+his. Ah, there are no partings and meetings now that leave discords
+in the remembrance, no neglected birthdays, no forgotten courtesies.
+It is beautiful to see the thoughtful brow relax in presence of wife
+and children, and to know that ours is, at last, the happy home I so
+long sighed for. Is the change all in Ernest? Is it not possible that
+I have grown more reasonable, less childish and aggravating?
+
+We are at a farm-house. Everything is plain, but neat and nice. I
+asked Mrs. Brown, our hostess; the other day, if she did not envy me
+my four little pets; she smiled, said they were the best children she
+ever saw, and that it was well to have a family if you have means to
+start them in the world; for her part, she lived from, hand to mouth
+as it was, and was sure she could never stand the worry and care of a
+house full of young ones.
+
+"But the worry and care is only half the story," I said. "The other
+half is pure joy and delight."
+
+"Perhaps so, to people that are well-to-do," she replied; "but to
+poor folks, driven to death as we are, it's another thing. I was
+telling him yesterday what a mercy it was there wasn't any young ones
+round under my feet, and I could take city boarders, and help work
+off the mortgage on the farm."
+
+"And what did your husband say to that?"
+
+"Well, he said we were young and hearty, and there was no such
+tearing hurry about the mortgage and that he'd give his right hand to
+have a couple of boys like yours."
+
+"Well?"--"Why, I said, supposing we had a couple, of boys, they
+wouldn't be like yours, dressed to look genteel and to have their
+genteel ways but a pair of wild colts, into everything, tearing their
+clothes off their backs, and wasting faster than we could earn. He
+said 'twasn't the clothes, 'twas the flesh and blood he wanted, and
+'twasn't no use to argufy about it; a man that hadn't got any
+children wasn't mor'n half a man. 'Well,' says I, supposing you had a
+pack of, 'em, what have you got to give 'em?' 'Jest exactly what my
+father and mother gave me,' says he; 'two hands to earn their bread
+with, and a welcome you could have heard from Dan to Beersheba.'"
+
+"I like to hear that!" I said. "And I hope many such welcomes will
+resound in this house. Suppose money does come in while little
+goes-out; suppose you get possession of the whole farm; what then?
+Who will enjoy it with you? Who will you leave it to when you die?
+And in your old age who will care for you?"
+
+"You seem awful earnest," she said.
+
+"Yes, I am in earnest. I want to see little children adorning every
+home, as flowers adorn every meadow and every wayside. I want to see
+them welcomed to the homes they enter, to see their parents grow less
+and less selfish, and more and more loving, because they have come. I
+want to see God's precious gifts accepted, not frowned upon and
+refused."
+
+Mr. Brown came in, so I could say no more. But my heart warmed
+towards him, as I looked at his frank good-humored face, and I should
+have been glad to give him the right hand of fellowship, As it was I
+could only say a word or two about the beauty of his farm, and the
+scenery of this whole region.
+
+"Yes," he said, gratified that I appreciated his fields and groves,
+"it is a tormented pretty-laying farm. Part of it was her father's,
+and part of it was my father's; there ain't another like it in the
+country. As to the scenery, I don't know as I ever looked at it; city
+folks talk a good deal about it, but they've nothing to do but look
+round." Walter came trotting in on two bare, white feet, and with his
+shoes in his hand. He had had his nap, felt, as bright; and fresh as
+he looked rosy, and I did not wonder at Mr. Brown's catching him up
+and clasping his sunburnt arms about the little fellow, and pressing
+him against the warm heart that yearned for nestlings of its own.
+
+Sept. 23-Home again, and the full of the thousand cares that follow
+the summer and precede the winter. But let mothers and wives fret as
+they will, they enjoy these labors of love, and would feel lost
+without them. For what amount of leisure, ease and comfort would I
+exchange husband and children and this busy home?
+
+Martha is better, and Helen has come back to us. I don't know how we
+have lived without her so long. Her life seems necessary to the
+completion of every one of ours. Some others have fancied it
+necessary to the completion of theirs, but she has not a greed with
+them. We are glad enough to keep her; and yet I hope the day will
+come when she, so worthy of it, will taste the sweet joys of wifehood
+and motherhood.
+
+JANUARY 1, 1853.-It is not always so easy to practice, as it is to
+preach. I can see in my wisdom forty reasons for having four children
+and no more. The comfort of sleeping in peace, of having a little
+time to read, and to keep on with my music; strength with which to
+look after Ernest's poor people when they are sick; and, to tell the
+truth, strength to be bright and fresh and lovable to him--all these
+little joys have been growing very precious to me, and now--I must
+give them up. I want to do it cheerfully and without a frown. But I
+find I love to have my own way, and that at the very moment I was
+asking God to appoint my work for me, I was secretly marking it out
+for myself. It is mortifying to find my will less in harmony with His
+than I thought it was; and that I want to prescribe to Him how I
+shall spend the time and the health and the strength which are His,
+not mine. But I will not rest until till this struggle is over; till
+I can say with a smile, "Not my will! Not my will! But Thine!"
+
+We have been, this winter, one of the happiest families on earth. Our
+love to each other, Ernest's and mine, though not perfect-nothing on
+earth is-has grown less selfish, more Christ-like; it has been
+sanctified by prayer and by the sorrows we have borne together. Then
+the children have been well and happy, and the source of almost
+unmitigated joy and comfort. And Helen's presence in this home, her
+sisterly affection, her patience with the children and her influence
+over them, is a benediction for which I cannot be thankful enough.
+How delightful it is to have a sister! I think it is not often the
+case that own sisters have such perfect Christian sympathy with each
+other as we have. Ever since the day she ceased to torment herself
+with the fear that she was not a child of God, and laid aside the
+sombre garments she had worn so long, she has had a peace that has
+hardly known a cloud. She says, in a note written me about the time:
+
+"I want you to know, my darling sister, that the despondency that made
+my affliction so hard to bear fled before those words of yours which,
+as I have already told you, God taught you to speak. I do not know
+whether I was really His child, at the time, or not. I had certainly
+had an experience very different from yours; prayer had never been
+much more to me than a duty; and I had never felt the sweetness of
+that harmony between God and I the human soul that I now know can
+take away all the bitterness from the cup of sorrow. I knew-who can
+help knowing it that reads God's word?-that he required submission
+from His children and that His children gave it, no matter what it
+cost. The Bible is full of beautiful expressions of it; so are our
+hymns; so are the written lives of all good men and good women; and I
+have seen it in you, my dear Katy, at the very moment you were
+accusing yourself of the want of it. Entire oneness of the will with
+the Divine Will seem to me to be the law and the gospel of the
+Christian life; and this evidence of a renewed nature, I found
+wanting in myself. At any moment during the three years following
+James' death I would have snatched away from God, if I could; I was
+miserably lonely and desolate without him, not merely because he had
+been so much, to me, but because his loss revealed to me the distance
+between Christ and my soul. All I could do was to go on praying, year
+after year, in a dreary, hopeless way, that I might learn to say, as
+David did, 'I opened not my mouth because Thou didst it.' When you
+suggested that instead of trying to figure out whether I had loved
+God, I should begin to love Him now, light broke in upon my soul; I
+gave myself to Him that instant and as soon as I could get away by
+myself I fell upon my knees and gave myself up to the sense of His
+sovereignty for the first time in my life. Then, too, I looked at my
+'light affliction,' and at the 'weight of glory' side by side, and
+thanked Him that through the one He had revealed to me the other.
+Katy, I know the human heart is deceitful above all things, but I
+think it would be a dishonor to God to doubt that He then revealed
+Himself to me as He doth not to the world, and that the sweet peace I
+then found in yielding to Him will be more or less mine so long as I
+live. Oh, if all sufferers could learn what I have learned! that
+every broken heart could be healed as mine has been healed! My
+precious sister, cannot we make this one part of our mission on
+earth, to pray for every sorrow-stricken soul, and whenever we have
+influence over such, to lead it to honor God by instant obedience to
+His will, whatever that may be? I have dishonored Him by years of
+rebellious, carefully-nursed sorrow; I want to honor Him now by years
+of resignation and grateful joy."
+
+Reading this letter over in my present mood has done me good. More
+beautiful faith in God than Helen's I have never seen; let me have
+it, too. May this prayer, which, under the inspiration of the moment,
+I can offer without a misgiving, become the habitual, deep-seated
+desire of my soul:
+
+"Bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. Take
+what I cannot give--my heart, body, thoughts, time, abilities, money,
+health, strength, nights, days, youth, age, and spend them in Thy
+service, O my crucified Master, Redeemer, God. Oh, let these not be
+mere words! Whom have I in heaven but Thee? and there is none upon
+earth that I desire in comparison of Thee. My heart is athirst for
+God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God?"
+
+
+
+Chapter 27
+
+XXVII.
+
+AUGUST 1
+
+I HAVE just written to Mrs. Brown to know whether she will take us
+for the rest of the summer. A certain little man, not a very old
+little man either, has kept us in town till now. Since he has come,
+we are all very glad of him, though he came on his own invitation,
+brought no wardrobe with him, does not pay for his board, never
+speaks a word, takes no notice of us, and wants more waiting on than
+any one else in the house. The children are full of delicious
+curiosity about him, and overwhelm him with presents of the most
+heterogeneous character.
+
+Sweet Briar Farm, AUG. 9.-We got there this afternoon, bag and
+baggage. I had not said a word to Mrs. Brown about the addition to
+our family circle, knowing she had plenty of room, and as we alighted
+from the carriage, I snatched my baby from his nurse's arms and ran
+gaily up the walk with him in mine. "If this splendid fellow doesn't
+convert her nothing will," I said to myself. At that instant what
+should I see but Mrs. Brown, running to meet me with a boy in her
+arms exactly like Mr. Brown, only not quite six feet long, and not
+sunburnt.
+
+"There!" I cried, holding up my little old man.
+
+"There!" said she, holding up hers.
+
+We laughed till we cried; she took my baby and I took hers; after
+looking at him I liked mine better than ever; after looking at mine
+she was perfectly satisfied with hers.
+
+We got into the house at last; that is to say, we mothers did; the
+children darted through it and out of the door that led to the fields
+and woods, and vanished in the twinkling of an eye.
+
+Mrs. Brown had always been a pretty woman, with bright eyes, shining,
+well-kept hair, and a color in her cheeks like the rose which had
+given its name to her farm. But there was now a new beauty in her
+face; the mysterious and sacred sufferings and joys of maternity had
+given it thought and feeling.
+
+"I had no idea I should be so fond of a baby," she said, kissing it,
+whenever she stopped to put in a comma; "but I don't know how I ever
+got along without one. He's off at work nearly the whole day, and
+when I had got through with mine, and had put on my afternoon dress,
+and was ready to sit down, you can't think how lonesome it was. But
+now by the time I am dressed, baby is ready to go out to get the air;
+he knows the minute he sees me bring out his little hat that he is
+going to see his father and he's awful fond of his father. Though
+that isn't so strange, either, for his father's awful fond of him.
+All his little ways are so pretty, and he never cries unless he's
+hungry or tired. Tell mother a pretty story now; yes, mother hears,
+bless his little heart!"
+
+Then when Mr. Brown came home to his supper, his face was a sight to
+see, as he caught sight of me at my open window, and came to it with
+the child's white arms clinging to his neck, looking as happy and as
+bashful as a girl.
+
+"You see she must needs go to quartering this bouncing young one on
+to me," he said, "as if I didn't have to work hard enough before.
+Well, maybe he'll get his feed off the farm; we'll see what we can
+do."
+
+"Mamma," Una whispered, as he went off his facsimile, to kiss it
+rapturously, behind a woodpile, "do you think Mrs. Brown's baby very
+pretty?"
+
+Which was so mild a way of suggesting the fact of the case, that I
+kissed her without trying to hide my amusement.
+
+AUG. 10.-After being cooped up in town so large a part of the summer,
+the children are nearly wild with delight at being in the country
+once more. Even our demure Una skips about with a buoyancy I have
+never seen in her; she never has her ill turns when out of the city,
+and I wish, for her sake, we could always live here. As to Raymond
+and Walter, I never pretend to see them except at their meals and
+their bedtime; they just live outdoors, following the men at their
+work, asking all sorts of absurd questions, which Mr. Brown reports
+to me every night, with shouts of delighted laughter. Two gay and
+gladsome boys they are; really good without being priggish; I don't
+think I could stand that. People ask me how it happens that my
+children are all so promptly obedient and so happy. As if it chanced
+that some parents have such children, or chanced that some have not!
+I am afraid it is only too true, as some one has remarked, that "this
+is the age of obedient parents!" What then will be the future of
+their children? How can they yield to God who have never been taught
+to yield to human authority? And how well fitted will they be to rule
+their own households who have never learned to rule themselves?
+
+AUG. 31.-This has been one of those cold, dismal, rainy days which
+are not infrequent during the month of August. So the children have
+been obliged to give up the open air, of which they are so fond, and
+fall back upon what entertainment could be found within the house. I
+have read to them the little journal I kept during the whole life of
+the brother I am not willing they should forget. His quaint and
+sagacious sayings were delicious to them; the history of his first
+steps, his first words sounded to them like a fairy tale. And the
+story of his last steps, his last words on earth, had for them such a
+tender charm, that there was a cry of disappointment from them all,
+when I closed the little book and told them we should have to wait
+till we got to heaven before we could know anything more about his
+precious life.
+
+How thankful I am that I kept this journal, and that I have almost as
+charming ones about most of my other children! What I speedily forgot
+amid the pressure of cares and of new events is safely written down,
+and will be the source of endless pleasure to them long after the
+hand that wrote has ceased from its labors, and lies inactive and at
+rest.
+
+Ah, it is a blessed thing to be a mother!
+
+SEPTEMBER 1.-This baby of mine, is certainly the sweetest and best I
+ever had I feel an inexpressible tenderness for it, which I cannot
+quite explain to myself, for I have loved them all dearly, most
+dearly. Perhaps it is so with all mothers, perhaps they all grow
+more loving, more forbearing, more patient as they grow older, and
+yearn over these helpless little ones with an ever-increasing, yet
+chastened delight. One cannot help sheltering their tender infancy,
+who will so soon pass forth to fight the battle of life, each one
+waging an invisible warfare against invisible foes. How thankfully we
+would fight it for them, if we might!
+
+SEPTEMBER 20.-The mornings and evenings are very cool now, while in
+the middle of the day it is quite hot. Ernest comes to see us very
+often, under the pretense that he can't trust me with so young a baby
+! He is so tender and thoughtful, and spoils me so, that this world
+is very bright to me; I am a little jealous of it; I don't want to be
+so happy in Ernest, or in my children, as to forget for one instant
+that I am a pilgrim and a stranger on earth.
+
+EVENING.-There is no danger that I shall. Ernest suddenly made his
+appearance to-night, and in a great burst of distress quite unlike
+anything I ever saw in him, revealed to me that he had been feeling
+the greatest anxiety about me ever since the baby came. It is all
+nonsense. I cough, to be sure; but that it is owing to the varying
+temperature we always have at this season. I shall get over, it as
+soon as we get home, I dare say.
+
+But suppose I should not; what then? Could I leave this precious
+little flock, uncared for, untended? Have I faith to believe that if
+God calls me away from them, it will be in love to them? I do not
+know. The thought of getting away from the sin that still so easily
+besets me is very delightful, and I have enjoyed so many, many such
+foretastes of the bliss of heaven that I know I should be happy
+there, but then my children, all of them under twelve years old! I
+will not choose, I dare not.
+
+My married life has been a beautiful one. It is true that sin and
+folly, and sickness and sorrow, have marred its perfection, but it
+has been adorned by a love which has never faltered. My faults have
+never alienated Ernest; his faults, for like other human beings he
+has them, have never overcome my love to him. This has been the gift
+of God in answer to our constant prayer, that whatever other
+bereavement we might have to suffer, we might never be bereft of this
+benediction. It has been the glad secret of a happy marriage, and I
+wish I could teach it to every human being who enters upon a state
+that must bring with it the depth of misery, or life's most sacred
+and mysterious joy.
+
+OCTOBER 6.-Ernest has let me stay here to see the autumnal foliage
+in its ravishing beauty for the first, perhaps for the last, time.
+The woods and fields and groves are lighting up my very soul! It
+seems as if autumn had caught the inspiration and the glow of summer,
+had hidden its floral beauty, its gorgeous sunsets and its bow of
+promise in its heart of hearts, and was now flashing it forth upon
+the world with a lavish and opulent hand. I can hardly tear myself
+away, and return to the prose of city life. But Ernest has come for
+us, and is eager to get us home before colder weather. I laugh at his
+anxiety about his old wife. Why need he fancy that this trifling
+cough is not to give way as it often has done before? Dear Ernest! I
+never knew that he loved me so.
+
+OCTOBER 31.-Ernest's fear that he had let me stay too long in the
+country does not seem to be justified. We went so late that I wanted
+to indulge the children by staying late. So we have only just got
+home. I feel about as well as usual; it is true I have a little
+soreness a bout the chest, but it does not signify anything.
+
+I never was so happy, in my husband and children, in other words in
+my home, as I am now. Life looks very attractive. I am glad that I am
+going to get well.
+
+But Ernest watches me carefully, and want me, as a precautionary
+measure, to give up music, writing, sewing, and painting-the very
+things that occupy me! and lead an idle, useless life, for a time. I
+cannot refuse what he asks so tenderly, and as a personal favor to
+himself. Yet I should like to fill the remaining pages of my journal;
+I never like to leave things incomplete.
+
+JUNE 1, 1858.-I wrote that seven years ago, little dreaming how long
+it, would be before I should use a pen. Seven happy years ago!
+
+I suppose that some who have known what my outward life has been
+during this period would think of me as a mere object of pity. There
+has certainly been suffering and deprivation enough to justify the
+sympathy of my dear husband and children and the large circle of
+friends who have rallied about us. How little we knew we had so many!
+
+God has dealt very tenderly with me. I was not stricken down by
+sudden disease, nor were the things I delighted in all taken away at
+once. There was a gradual loss of strength and gradual increase of
+suffering, and it was only by degrees that I was asked to give up the
+employments in which I'd delighted, my household duties, my visits to
+the sick and suffering, the society of beloved friends. Perhaps
+Ernest perceived and felt my deprivations sooner than I did; his
+sympathy always seemed to out-run my disappointments. When I compare
+him, as he is now, with what he was when I first knew him I bless God
+for all the precious lessons He has taught him at my cost. There, is
+a tenacity and persistence about his love for me that has made these
+years almost as wearisome to him as they have been to me. As to
+myself, if I had been told what I was to learn through these
+protracted sufferings I am afraid I should have shrunk back in terror
+and so have lost all the sweet lessons God proposed to teach me. As
+it is He has led me on, step by step, answering my prayers in His own
+way; and I cannot bear to have a single human being doubt that it has
+been a perfect way. I love and adore it just as it is.
+
+Perhaps the suspense has been one of the most trying features of my
+case. Just as I have unclasped my hand from my dear Ernest's; just
+as I have let go my almost frantic hold of my darling children; just
+as heaven opened before me and I fancied my weariness over and my
+wanderings done; just then almost every alarming symptom would
+disappear and life recall me from the threshold of heaven itself.
+Thus I have been emptied from vessel to vessel, til I have learned
+that he only is truly happy who has no longer a choice of his own,
+and lies passive in God's hand.
+
+Even now no one can foretell the issue of this sickness. We live a
+day at a time not knowing what shall be on the morrow. But whether I
+live or die my happiness is secure and so I believe is of my beloved
+ones. This is a true picture of our home:
+
+A sick-room full of the suffering ravages the body but cannot touch
+the soul. A worn, wasting mother ministered unto by a devoted husband
+and by unselfish Christian children. Some of the peace of God if not
+all of it, shines in every face, is heard in every tone. It is a home
+that typifies and foreshadows the home that is perfect and eternal.
+
+Our dear Helen has been given us for this emergency. Is it not
+strange that seeing our domestic life should have awakened in her
+some yearnings for a home and a heart and children of her own. She
+has said that there was a weary point in her life when she made up
+her mind that she was never to know these joys. But she accepted her
+lot gracefully. I do not know any other word that describes so well
+the beautiful offering she made of her life to God and then to us. He
+accepted it, and as given her all the cares and responsibilities of
+domestic life without the transcendent joys that sustain the wife and
+the mother. She has been all in all to our children and God has been
+all in all to her. And she is happy in His service and in our love.
+
+JUNE 20-It took me nearly two weeks to write the above at intervals
+as my strength allowed. Ernest has consented to my finishing this
+volume, of which so few pages yet remain. And he let me see a dear
+old friend who came all the way from my native town to see me-Dr.
+Eaton, our family physician as long as I could remember. He is of an
+advanced age but full of vigor, his eye bright, and with a healthful
+glow on his cheek. But he says he is waiting and longing for his
+summons home. About that home we had a delightful talk together that
+did my very heart good. Then he made me tell him about this long
+sickness and the years of frail health and some of the sorrows
+through which I had toiled.
+
+"Ah, these lovely children are explained now," he said.
+
+"Do you really think," I asked, "that it has been good for my
+children to have a feeble, afflicted mother?"
+
+"Yes, I really think so. A disciplined mother--disciplined children."
+
+This comforting thought is one of the last drops in a cup of felicity
+already full.
+
+JUNE 2-Another Sunday, and all at church except my darling Una who
+keeps watch over her mother. These Sundays when I have had them each
+alone in turn have been blessed days to them and to me. Surely this
+is some compensation for what they lose in me of health and vigor. I
+know the state of each soul as far as it can be known, and have every
+reason to believe that my children all love my Saviour and are trying
+to live for Him. I have learned at last not to despise the day of
+small things, to cherish the tenderest blossom, and to expect my dear
+ones to be imperfect before they become perfect Christians.
+
+Una is a sweet composed young girl now eighteen years old and what
+can I say more of the love her brothers bear her than this: they
+never tease her. She has long ceased asking why she must have
+delicate health when so many others of her age are full of animal
+life and vigor but stands in her lot and place doing what she can,
+suffering what she must, with a meekness that makes her lovely in my
+eyes, and that I am sure unites her closely to Christ.
+
+JUNE 27.-It was Raymond's turn to stay with me to-day. He opened his
+heart to me more freely than he had ever done before.
+
+"Mamma," he began, "if papa is willing, I have made up my mind-that
+is to say if I get decently good-to go on a mission."
+
+I said playfully:
+
+"And mamma's consent is not to be asked?"
+
+"No," he said, getting hold of what there is left of my hand. "I
+know you wouldn't say a word. Don't you remember telling me once when
+I was a little boy that I might go and welcome?"
+
+"And don't you remember," I returned, "that you cried for joy, and
+then relieved your mind still farther by walking on your hands with
+your feet in the air?"
+
+We both laughed heartily at this remembrance, and then I said:
+
+"My dear boy, you know your fathers plan for you?"
+
+"Yes, I know he expects me to study with him, and take his place in
+the world."
+
+"And it is a very important place."
+
+His countenance fell as he fancied I was not entering heartily into
+his wishes.
+
+"Dear Raymond," I went on, "I gave you to God long before you gave
+yourself to Him. If He can make you useful in your own, or in other
+lands, I bless His name. Whether I live to see you a man, or not, I
+hope you will work in the Lord's vineyard, wherever He calls. I never
+asked anything but usefulness, in all my prayers for you; never once."
+His eyes filled with tears; he kissed me and walked away to the
+window to compose himself. My poor, dear, lovable, loving boy! He has
+all his mother's trials and struggles to contend with; but what
+matter it if they bring him the same peace?
+
+JUNE 30.--Everybody wonders to see me once more interested in my
+long-closed Journal, and becoming able to see the dear friends from
+whom I have been, in a measure cut off. We cannot ask the meaning of
+this remarkable increase of strength.
+
+I have no wish to choose. But I have come to the last page of my
+Journal, and living or dying, shall write in this volume no more. It
+closes upon a life of much childishness and great sinfulness, whose
+record makes me blush with shame but I no longer need to relieve my
+heart with seeking sympathy in its unconscious pages nor do I believe
+it well to go on analyzing it as I have done. I have had large
+experience of both joy and sorrow; I have the nakedness and the
+emptiness and I have seen the beauty and sweetness of life. What I
+say now, let me say to Jesus. What time and strength I used to spend
+in writing here, let me spend in praying for all men, for all
+sufferers who are out of the way, for all whom I love. And their name
+is Legion for I love everybody.
+
+Yes I love everybody! That crowning joy has come to me at last.
+Christ is in my soul; He is mine; I am as conscious of it as that my
+husband and children are mine; and His Spirit flows from mine in the
+calm peace of a river whose banks are green with grass and glad with
+flowers. If I die it will be to leave a wearied and worn body, and a
+sinful soul to go joyfully to be with Christ, to weary and to sin no
+more. If I live, I shall find much blessed work to do for Him. So
+living or dying I shall be the Lord's.
+
+But I wish, oh how earnestly, that whether I go or stay, I could
+inspire some lives with the joy that is now mine. For many years I
+have been rich in faith; rich in an unfaltering confidence that I was
+beloved of my God and Saviour. But something was wanting I was ever
+groping for a mysterious grace the want of which made me often
+sorrowful in the very midst of my most sacred joy, imperfect when I
+most longed for perfection. It was that personal love to Christ of
+which my precious mother so often spoke to me which she often urged
+me to seek upon my knees. If I had known then, as I know now what
+this priceless treasure could be to a sinful human soul, I would have
+sold all that I had to buy the field wherein it lay hidden. But not
+till I was shut up to prayer and to the study of Gods word by the
+loss of earthly joys, sickness destroying the flavor of them all, did
+I begin to penetrate the mystery that is learned under the cross. And
+wondrous as it is, how simple is this mystery! To love Christ and to
+know that I love Him-this is all!
+
+And when I entered upon the sacred yet oft-times homely duties of
+married life, if this love had been mine, how would that life have
+been transfigured! The petty faults of my husband under which I
+chafed would not have moved me; I should have welcomed Martha and her
+father to my home and made them happy there; I should have had no
+conflicts with my servants, shown no petulance to my children. For it
+would not have been I who spoke and acted but Christ who lived in me.
+
+Alas! I have had less than seven years in which to atone for a
+sinful, wasted past and to live a new and a Christ-like life. If I am
+to have yet more, thanks be to Him who has given me the victory, that
+Life will be Love. Not the love that rests in the contemplation and
+adoration of its object; but the love that gladdens, sweetens,
+solaces other lives.
+
+    O gifts of gifts!
+    O grace of faith
+    My God! how can it be
+    That Thou who hast discerning love,
+    Shouldst give that gift to me?
+
+    How many hearts thou mightst have had
+    More innocent than mine!
+    How many souls more worthy far
+    Of that sweet touch of Thine?
+
+    Oh grace! into unlikeliest hearts
+    It is thy boast to come
+    The glory of Thy light to find
+    In darkest spots a home.
+
+    Oh happy, happy that I am!
+    If thou canst be, O faith
+    The treasure that thou art in life
+    What wilt thou be in death?
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+STEPPING WESTWARD.
+
+WHILE my fellow-traveler and I were walking by the side of Loch
+Katrine one fine evening after sunset in our road to a hut where in
+the course of our tour we had been hospitably entertained some weeks
+before, we met, in one of the loneliest parts of that solitary region
+two well-dressed women, one of whom said to us by way of greeting,
+"What, you are stepping westward?"
+
+    "What, you are stepping westward?"
+    "Yea."--'Twould be a wildish destiny
+    If we who thus together roam
+    In a strange land and far from home
+    Were in this place the guests of chance:
+    Yet who would stop, or fear to advance,
+    Though home or shelter he had none,
+    With such a sky to lead him on?
+    The dewy ground was dark and cold;
+    Behind, all gloomy to behold:
+    And stepping westward seemed to be
+    A kind of heavenly destiny:
+    I liked the greeting; 'twas a sound
+    Of something without place and bound,
+    And seemed to give me spiritual right
+    To travel through that region bright.
+    The voice was soft and she who spake
+    Was walking by her native lake:
+    The salutation had to me
+    The very sound of courtesy:
+    Its power was felt; and while my eye
+    Was fixed upon the glowing sky,
+    The echo of the voice enwrought
+    A human sweetness with the thought
+    Of traveling through the world that lay
+    Before me in my endless way.--WORDSWORTH.
+
+
+The End
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Stepping Heavenward, by Mrs. E. Prentiss
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