that I shall grow better! and what companionable thoughts I've had all
day for that blessed walk!

_8th._--My life is a nice little life just now, as regular as clockwork.
We walk and we keep school, and our scholars kiss and love us, and we
kiss and love them, and we read Lamartine and I worship Leighton, good,
wise, holy Leighton, and we discourse about everything together and
dispute and argue and argue and dispute, and I'm quite happy, so I am!
As to Lamartine, he's no great things, as I know of, but I want to keep
up my knowledge of French and so we read twenty pages a day. And as to
our discourses, my fidgety, moralising sort of mind wants to compare its
doctrines with those of other people, though it's as stiff as a poker
in its own opinions. You're a very consistent little girl! you call
yourself a child, are afraid to open your mouth before folks, and yet
you're as obstinate and proud as a little man, daring to think for
yourself and act accordingly at the risk of being called odd and
incomprehensible. I don't care, though! Run on and break your neck if
you will. You're nothing especial after all.

_9th._--To-night, in unrolling a bundle of work I found a little note
therein from mother. Whew, how I kissed it! I thought I should fly out
of my senses, I was so glad. But I can't fly now-a-days, I'm growing
so unetherial. Why, I take up a lot of room in the world and my frocks
won't hold me. That's because my heart is so quiet, lying as still as a
mouse, after all its tossings about and trying to be happy in the things
of this life. Oh, I am so happy now in the _other_ life! But as for
telling other people so--as for talking religion--I don't see how I
_can._ It doesn't come natural. Is it because I am proud? But I pray to
be so holy, so truly a Christian, that my _life_ shall speak and gently
persuade all who see me to look for the hidden spring of my perpetual