peopling all the blue with misty forms. This facility of learning by
heart, and the habit of dreamy recitation, made me very familiar with
the Bible and very apt with its phrases. This stood me in good stead
at the prayer-meetings dear to the Evangelical, in which we all took
part; in turn we were called on to pray aloud--a terrible ordeal to
me, for I was painfully shy when attention was called to me; I used to
suffer agonies while I waited for the dreaded words, "Now, Annie dear,
will you speak to our Lord." But when my trembling lips had forced
themselves into speech, all the nervousness used to vanish and I was
swept away by an enthusiasm that readily clothed itself in balanced
sentences, and alack! at the end, I too often hoped that God and
Auntie had noticed that I prayed very nicely--a vanity certainly not
intended to be fostered by the pious exercise. On the whole, the
somewhat Calvinistic teaching tended, I think, to make me a little
morbid, especially as I always fretted silently after my mother. I
remember she was surprised on one of my home-comings, when Miss
Marryat noted "cheerfulness" as a want in my character, for at home I
was ever the blithest of children, despite my love of solitude; but
away, there was always an aching for home, and the stern religion cast
somewhat of a shadow over me, though, strangely enough, hell never
came into my dreamings except in the interesting shape it took in
"Paradise Lost." After reading that, the devil was to me no horned and
hoofed horror, but the beautiful shadowed archangel, and I always
hoped that Jesus, my ideal Prince, would save him in the end. The
things that really frightened me were vague, misty presences that I
felt were near, but could not see; they were so real that I knew just
where they were in the room, and the peculiar terror they excited lay
largely in the feeling that I was just going to see them. If by chance
I came across a ghost story it haunted me for months, for I saw
whatever unpleasant spectre was described; and there was one horrid