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Stepping Heavenward
Reg. $9.95          Sale: $5.97!

Elizabeth Prentiss. This classic spiritual work is an intimate journal of Katherine, a 16-year old young lady who struggles with daily life just as we do. Her life is a constant struggle to “step heavenward” as she deals with disappointment, heartache, and tragedy. Many girls and women find they can easily identify with Katherine. This treasure of womanly counsel is perfect for any young woman with a heart’s desire to know God. Many have testified that reading this book was a life-changing experience for them.
341 pp. Paperback. Sale price: $5.97

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An Excerpt from Stepping Heavenward:

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.

Elizabeth Prentiss: Family Background 

Elizabeth was born in Portland, Maine. Maine was then a district of Massachusetts, and Portland was its chief town and seaport, distinguished for the beauty of its location, its social refinement, and all the best characteristics of New England character. Not a few of the early settlers had come from Cape Cod and other parts of Massachusetts, and the blood of the Pilgrim fathers ran in their veins. Among its leading citizens at that time were men eminent for private and public virtue, and some of whom became still more widely known—either because of their own influence or because of their gifted children.

 Elizabeth Prentiss was the youngest daughter of Edward Payson, a famous minister and revival preacher. For more than half of a century, the name of Edward Payson had been a household word among the churches of New England and beyond. Edward Payson came from very old Puritan stock, and from a family noted for the numbers of ministers it produced for over two centuries.

Elizabeth Prentiss: Youthful Years

 Elizabeth showed exceptional gifts at a young age, and she began writing children’s stories when she was still in her teens. As a young woman, she published some of her children’s stories and poems in a Christian magazine called The Youth’s Companion. When she was twenty, she opened a small girls’ school in her parents’ home, and she also began teaching a Sunday school class. When she was twenty-two, Elizabeth Prentiss became a director at a girls’ boarding school.

When Elizabeth was 27, she married George Prentiss, the brother of one of her best friends. She and her husband made their home in New Bedford, MA, where George became a pastor of one of the local churches.

Challenges and Triumphs

Elizabeth Prentiss was no stranger to suffering. In her thirties, she lost both her second child and her fourth child – all in the span of just three months. She struggled with poor health for most of her life.

Rather than feeling sorry for herself, Elizabeth used life’s trials as a spiritually strengthening tool and to give her empathy for the sufferings of others. She was an angel of strength and consolation to many others who were undergoing trials.

Elizabeth Prentiss continued writing throughout much of her life. She wrote over twenty books, including the spiritual classic, Stepping Heavenward, which was published in 1869. She also wrote letters, poems, and lyrics to hymns.

Elizabeth died in 1878, at the age of sixty. After her death, her husband published a biography of her, together with a collection of her letters. He did this to fulfill his wife’s wish that her sufferings could be used for the comfort of others.

Elizabeth Elliot

by Mrs. Elizabeth 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 ill- ness 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 bf 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 today 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

today 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. I, 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.-1 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,

make’s 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 tomorrow 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. 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 be fore, 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. Its 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,” be 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 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 to 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 in 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 in 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 be gin 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, arid 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!”

“1 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 you 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 today, 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 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 my-self. 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 re place 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 1ife 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” 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 s 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.

“1 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 riot 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…. .1 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,

how-ever, 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 com plain, 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 bee 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,” be 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.-lf 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 be 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 sickroom 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. I, 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 m 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 mother 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 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, ob served 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, arid

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 I, 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. 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 dark ness.”

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

re 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 1ittle 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 he 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 tenfold 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, whi1e 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, riot 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, hut 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 bad just got through lunch, and I was

opening my mouth to tell Mary she might go, when the doorbell 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.