and regretting my foolish throwing away, through pique, the only chance of help, things outside of me were going wrong in all directions. The new governess had not yet arrived; Sarah did a maid's duties; the little ones missed and clamored for me. At once I resolved to accept and follow another portion of the new doctrine. I went back, despite Ellen's entreaties, to my former post. Again I took up the business of teaching; and was in some danger of incurring the condemnation of overdoing in my earnestness, and the children's zeal. I wondered how much of the late changes our guest had noticed, and whether he attributed them to the effect of his teachings. I had no means of knowing or guessing in regard to this, as Herbert took his friend to town and kept him several days, just at the time of my resuming my duties. Friday afternoon of the same week he suddenly appeared; and as I was sitting alone on the verandah reading, my pupils having been dismissed to their sports, he came up the steps and said, "I am going to give you some trouble, if you will allow me; I have a sermon to write for Sunday, and all thoughts which I had in the first of the week, on the subject, have vanished. I must talk to somebody to help collect them again; will you assist me, by letting me talk to you, or by talking yourself?" He took up the book, a volume of " Cousin," which I had thrown down, and began asking me questions of what I had read; saying that he had found a good theme. Now it became easy to state my perplexities, and at last I was led to acknowledge the true source of my troubles and misgivings about the children's intrusion on his time. The next week I once more yielded to the children's desire, and accompanied them on a water excursion. I was compelled to acknowledge that our guide fully appreciated my misgivings on the score of hindrance, when he gave me a severe metaphysical treatise, and opening it in the middle, asked me to read. And thus began a new phase of our summer life. I was not allowed to complain of idleness, because that vice was guarded against effectually. From this time, I read, always beginning where he told me; often turning page after page, with as little apprehension of their meaning, as if the letters had been Greek instead of English. But in some following conversation the import and connection of what I had read with the whole subject was clearly and patiently unfolded to me. And, what was most delightful in this new life, I came to feel that I was being of use in many ways, even to our guest. He never suffered me to feel under obligations for his kindness in teaching me; but whenever I endeavored to thank him, he would evade any acknowledgements by asking, "Where would have been my last sermon, if some one had not waked me up by asking questions?" or "Don't you consider, Miss Brainard, how it clears one's mind on any point, and brings out new ideas on it, to undertake an exposition of it to another? The listener, in such cases, is the person who confers the obligation." Altogether my life had never been so fully occupied, it certainly had never seemed so much life as now. Every relation had assumed a new and beneficent aspect under the present influences. How easily I had forgotten Charlotte and my future. How readily I had come to find in our present household at Auburn, my whole world, to feel it comprised in the persons of my cousins, aunt, the children, and our guest. In the fresh impulse which had been given to effort in the awakening life within, I cared for nothing, asked nothing, beyond the present, and saw no shadow of change. And August came. Can there ever again be such days? Will the voice of the sea ever call again and wake in my soul such answering tones? Shall I ever see such hues in clouds, or hear such whispers in the trees? Will like glories ever shine for me, in sun or stars? I forgot that the preaching at Lenox was a summer's engagement, and how that summer's hours were flying; till memory was awakened by a shock. On the evening of the third Sunday in August I had seen aunt in bed, and had come for Alice, who was up far beyond her usual time; Sarah had grown impatient, but the child now lay half asleep in her friend's arms, he and her father too busy in their talk to heed how the time was passing. Tired as she was, the little one, when I attempted to take her, sleepily teased for a longer time, and clasped her hands tightly round the neck of her friend. Herbert was beginning to loosen the little fingers, when Etienne interposed, in a voice unlike his own, "Don't, Lee, take the child away; sit down, Miss Brainard, please. We shall have only one more night like this." Then I remembered | think of, in the new world which he had discovthere was but one week more. ered to me. Philosophy and theology did not comprise the whole of what I had begun to know that summer. A friendship between men, like that of Herbert and his guest, strong, devoted, tender, was something new to me; its contemplation a perpetual marvel and delight. Then, far beyond this relation, and apart from the gratitude for, and satisfaction in what he had taught me, was the higher knowledge of the teacher. I did not realize this at the time, but later I knew that life, impulse, force, came more from what the man was in himself, what he represented to me, than from his words, utterances of the eternal truth, though they were. For principles must have been lived to convince us of their beauty, and to convict us of our obligation in respect to them. The intellect and conscience may accept abstract truths, but their power is wanting till the heart recognizes and is drawn after them, as they come before it in a life. We ask to know what is involved in our acceptance of a great principle, how it will affect all our relations, how much it comprehends, and the extent of its demands. Our questions are answered and our doubts resolved, when the principle is manifested in the life of CHAPTER IX. "Can calm despair and wild unrest And the last week was ended. He was gone. I believed that my life was to go on quietly; that I should go back to my reading, assisted and encouraged by the help which he had given me. We must all miss him, of course; and the many delightful talks I had enjoyed of late would cause me to feel the change deeply. But their memory and the gain which had come of his sojourn with us, and the books he had counseled me to read, would be to me instead of his presence. We were friends too; and I must live a truer, braver life, with a new friend to With this expectation and secure in this confidence, I took up life and its cares, when the last summer day had passed. But who knows himself? Who shall dare undertake promise keeping on behalf of his heart? When our guest was gone, when I could entertain no reasonable hope of meeting him again, then the loneliness, the awful desolation of soul, which must be felt to be comprehended, fell upon me. Then I began to realize what these summer days had been to me; how all other interests and relations had become connected with the scattered and irregular intervals occupied by riding, walking, sailing. How the desultory conversations had been the grand charm of existence, and had made it life. I had no mother or sister to read my sorrow, through their affectionate concern for my peace. Ellen loved me, but she always declared that Herbert and myself were alike incomprehensible to her, in many of our notions. She argued against my assuming the position of governess; expostulated with me on shutting myself out from society; but left me free when the arguments and expostulations failed. So she regarded the whole summer's occupations and interests as part of her brother's and cousin's eccentricities, and troubled herself no farther with them. I was well in body; and none about me had cause to suspect me otherwise in mind. I went to all ordinary duties just the same, and for the first time suffered myself to be drawn into society. But within, the terrible blankness made itself felt more and more. Alone I was left to interpret and to struggle with a great emotion. It was something so new and strange and unexpected, that, for a time, I did not understand or realize the import of that lesson which, in addition to others, I have been unconsciously learning. But my soul called for the sympathy and companionship it had lost; for the bread of life which had just been snatched from it; and the unanswering silence and famine of the present, gave some tokens of the meaning of the past. Then I began to have part in that strange and startling realization of the connection of all persons, situations and circumstances with a mental state. A conversation on this subject,. in the past summer, had brought up the singular phenomenon of an emotion becoming the centre, around which all things seemed to revolve. Now every book I opened, every person whom I met, each insignificant object, offered new suggestions, and presented my sorrow and loss in a new light; I saw it, heard it, read it, everywhere. Those summer hours, so happy and so blessed, as now they seemed to have been, were they to be become, through vain regrets, a curse and blight upon the rest of my life? Were they always, like spectres, to rise and in mocking tones to taunt me with their declaration, "Never again?" At first the oppressive sense of want and loss was all I knew. I sunk dispirited beneath the lonely feeling of utter desolation; the emptiness and insipidity of everything which had formerly possessed interest; but I had no apprehension of my real state. Like one whose body has long been diseased, and who at last awakes to the fact that he is sick, I came to some consciousness of my mental condition, and to realize that I needed help. At once, all those outward influences which had lent their aid in irritating the wound, began prescribing something toward its cure. Each had some word of advice, some system of relief which I determined to follow. Like the invalid, with his quack nostrums, I adopted and threw away successively, panaceas philosophical, philanthropical and theological; having found no good in any, but having grown worse in spite of them. Endeavors to turn the thoughts from an all-absorbing subject, and to fix them on indiferent matters, had, as any knowledge of mental phenomena would have taught me, just the opposite effect. The subject to be avoided, had, by being constantly dwelt on, become a centre round which my thoughts circled, and to which, by necessity, they ever returned. The effort to entreat or compel them to some other topic only set them more firmly to the one from which I would turn them. Back, from each experiment I went straight to the old memories and the old regrets, to recall minute incidents; to dwell on the treasured words and tones; especially to endeavor to extract peace and comfort from recollections of that last day. There were seasons when I fancied that the peace and comfort were attained; when the memory of my friend's look, as he asked, "Have I done you any good, Margaret?" when his declaration of the good those months had been to him, and the few words in which he said that my interest in the great themes we had con- One night I accidentally took up DeQuincey's "Confessions," and as I read his struggles with the dark demon, who held him in its grasp, a new light flashed on me. I am an inebriate! I exclaimed. I know now where I stand, and whence help must come. The opium-eater's warfare was an almost invincible habit. He must deny to his body the stimulant it craved; I must thrust from my mind the foe which is destroying my peace. Of course this was no new aspect of the case; (only a modification of the old diagnosis ;) but I fancied that it was. That night, I contended, in dreams, with the phantoms which the book had conjured. I was first at sea, clinging with all my strength to a bit of plank; holding with teeth and nails to the only solid thing on the bleak waste of waters; the waves and wind clamoring and shrieking, and great gulfs yawning to devour me. Still I clung to the tossed fragment. But now, a monster billow came, swelling, heaving, showing its teeth of foam; its black shadow was upon me; it was just bursting to engulf me! I awoke ! Then serpents, fiery, forked-tongued snakes were circling round me, and I was beating them off. They came nearer; they were closely round me; my hands were weary, my efforts feeble. And now I felt the terrible hot breath on my face; I could see down their red throats. Then the monsters were winding their fearful coils about my arms; my hands grew stiff and dead; I tried to scream, but had no power to make a sound. A despairing, agonized attempt to tear off the horrible reptiles, and I was awake! When morning dawned, and I recalled the terrors which had held possession of my sleep, there seemed a marvellous significance in them. I fancied that they were a special confirmation of my newly adopted theory; and an encouragement to test it in practice. In thus interpreting my visions of the night, I drew a conclusion entirely opposed to one which the author I had been reading draws from similar premises. In these dream-encounters with ravenous animals, or furious elements, I too saw fancy's dramatic representation of our wrestlings with fiercer and more deadly spiritual forces. The unequal contest, the prospective triumph of our tremendous adversary, the moment when, on the point of succumbing, we put forth one last despairing effort, and woke too soon for the catastrophe; all were expressive and symbolic. But this last agony of desperation, stood to me the expression of victory, and not of defeat: it symbolized the final, thorough rousing of the will, the girding itself to one fierce, anguished moral effort, by which we are saved. I made personal application of this; I had long been beset with regrets and despondencies which destroyed my peace; I had contended against them thus far, in vain. They had gained and kept their ground. I had lost all hopes of help but one: the human will was never given for naught; what had it not accomplished? I would bring myself resolutely to its exercise. No thought of the past was to be harbored for an instant. The present was mine; it should be filled with its own cares and duties; I would set myself firmly against the entrance of vain regrets and false hopes; of harassing memories and useless questionings, by barring every avenue to the approach of each. I went from my chamber confident; rather longing for some of the old despondent feelings to appear, that I might try my strength upon them. But wearied in body, I felt a strange calmness, that seemed strength of spirit. I had heard of persons who, determining to conquer some evil passion, or to make some devout consecration in behalf of duty, had shut out the world, set themselves resolutely to the work; fought one hard battle, and won it! I knew some of the old stories of the spiritual conflicts between man and his arch-adversary. I began to fancy the past night my hour of struggle; and to deem this truce a final victory. I had yet to learn the meaning of that declaration, "The kingdom of heaven" is not at the cry, "Lo here," or "Lo there;" but that peace of mind, rest from torturing anxieties, like the assurance of forgiveness, and realization of hope, comes not with observation. Our late guest was supplying a pulpit five hundred miles away. Herbert often, and I occasionally, received letters from him. Over a few lines, telling me of his employments, asking after my health and the children's, I occupied myself for days and weeks, striving to extract from mere expressions of friendly regard, something of that deeper interest which my heart craved. Sometimes, when it seemed that a few words traced by his hand would be like new life to me, none came. But when, through the pressure of ordinary cares, I knew unusual freedom from loneliness and grief, and if an unwonted ray of sunshine had come into my daily life, then a letter would come; or Herbert would carelessly give me a message from one of his and the spell was broken, my tranquility ended. So came the first trials of my fancied strength; and by the power which some slight incident or insignificant object possessed to change the forced current of my thoughts, and to set them on the track of bitter memories, and the ease with which these held dominion, I might have learned to distrust my own ability, or the sincerity of my resolutions. But there was too much staked on this last effort. It is for my life, I said; and there were terrors behind me, to hinder any retracing of my steps. I saw now the meaning of Hercules' labor with the Hydra; shudderingly, I beheld the tremendous truth of that old Greek fable, unfolded during this struggle of my own. CHAPTER X. "Then Samuel took a stone, and set it between Mizpeh and Shen, and called the name of it Ebenezer, saying, Hitherto hath the Lord helped us." One autumn evening at But help did come. dusk, I left home to procure a book that I wanted. Herbert had been reading to me that day, some passages in a letter from his friend. They related to the state of the times, the writer's anxiety as to the principles that were to govern the North, in its work of subduing the six-months-old rebellion; and the stand which Christian men should take. How plainly I saw the great gulf which separated me, in my intense selfishness, from him, whose field of interest was the world. How keenly I realized the difference between his instructions to me, a mere fraction of his work of enlightening the ignorant, and my narrow longings for personal interest and friendship. These reflections only made the sense of desolation and loneliness more intense. I had forgotten all former resolutions, all the experiments towards thrusting aside bitter memories; I had given the reins to fancy, and each moment increased the torture of spirit I endured. Before me the desolate, spiritless years stood up black and cheerless. The question, of what I had really gained in the battle against weariness and despair, had no answer that suggested hope or comfort. And at the thoughts of future efforts my heart sickened within me. I cannot bear it, I exclaimed, and wished to die. The night was warm and windy; black, heavy masses of clouds obscuring the stars. Unconsciously I had wandered far out of my way; occupied completely with my tormenting thoughts. Suddenly my attention was arrested; I was passing a small chapel, in which a prayer and conference meeting was being held; and, at that instant, these words broke in clear, sweet strains on the night air : : "How can I sink with such a prop As my eternal God, Who bears the earth's huge pillows up, And spreads the heavens abroad." Before the second verse was finished, I had taken an obscure seat in the little assembly, and heard, with bowed head and streaming tears, "All that I am, and all I have My cheerful hands resign." The hymn was not new to me; I must have heard it many times before. I was familiar with expressions of its sentiment in more exalted language, and to sweeter measures. But now, over the tumult of my thoughts these words swept strong conviction in the Divine love and compassion, as I had never known it before. That trust in the Father's goodness and providential care, which is the great burden of the Psalmist, which inspired prophets and apostles; the mighty, all-sustaining truth, the essence of Christianity, the strength of lofty souls in all time, as well as the help of the humblest, came now to me. From that moment the spirit of life entered into and quickened principles which my intellect had long since received and accepted. I understood, in a measure, the weak point in my theories and experiments; and that though there is a sphere of activity for the human will, where to be idle or passive is sin, there is for it a plane of submission too. That though in the larger portion of human life the injunction, "Stand fast, quit yourselves like men: be strong," is binding, yet there are seasons and circumstances in which it is for us only to be still and know that he who is ordering our affairs is God. O, the peace, the unspeakable blessing of that hour, when first I could say, though only feebly and tremblingly, "Not my will, but Thine." When I was able to yield myself and all the concerns of life to His hands, who controls the hosts of heaven; who yet has time and care for the tiniest thing that lives. And time went on I had found rest, and did not ask happiness; but even that was to come. The summer of 1862 was with us; the burdens and torturing anxieties of more than a year of civil war rested on the nation. Herbert had told me of his friend; at the place to which he had gone from us, he was declaring plainly the occasion for strife, and the only hope of any worthy and honorable peace. Whoever might fail or falter, he stood firmly for right, as before a blow had been struck. Earnest, steadfast he was, and ready for any service to which he might give himself. But he was doubtful and troubled at the aspect of events; he feared lest our rulers and the people of the North should be blinded still, and the Babylonish garment remain among us. September came; and with it what was, to many faithful, waiting hearts, a promise of the New Day; the star just rising, which should mount higher, till it stood over the spot where the Young Child, the new heir of Freedom, should be born. One evening Herbert appeared at an unusual hour, and asked me to go with him back to town, and attend a meeting held in reference to the great event of the hour. I was surprised that my cousin, whose heart and hands were so full of the one cause, should have come out purposely to get me. But everything would seem strange now if we had time to dwell on the strangeness. Herbert placed me in a good seat, with some friends; then I saw him on the platform, deep in conversation with the speakers. Soon I was listening to burning, eloquent expressions of joy and thanksgiving, that to us was given to see the day so earnestly hoped and prayed for. One speaker, after an affecting tribute to the pioneers in the cause, who had so labored and watched for the things which our eyes were permitted to behold; but who had fallen asleep in faith and hope of this hour, was closing in an exultant strain, when I caught sight of Herbert, whom I had missed from the platform, entering by a side door; I watched him making his way through the crowd; when he reached the steps of the speaker's stand, I saw that my cousin was not alone; he paused, and one came for |