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