or she will do it, and be made easy, were it a pilgrimage of a thousand
miles, with shoes full of split peas instead of boiled ones; but if once
assured that doing does no good, the drooping Little-faiths are left at
leisure to worry about their souls, as the other class of weaklings worry
about their bodies. The effect on character does not seem to be very
different in the two classes. Metaphysicians may discuss the nature of
selfishness at their leisure; if to have all her thoughts centring on the
one point of her own well-being by and by was selfishness, then Silence
Withers was supremely selfish; and if we are offended with that form of
egotism, it is no more than ten of the twelve Apostles were, as the
reader may see by turning to the Gospel of St. Matthew, the twentieth
chapter and the twenty-fourth verse.

The next practical difficulty was, that she attempted to carry out a
theory which, whatever might be its success in other cases, did not work
kindly in the case of Myrtle Hazard, but, on the contrary, developed a
mighty spirit of antagonism in her nature, which threatened to end in
utter lawlessness. Miss Silence started from the approved doctrine, that
all children are radically and utterly wrong in all their motives,
feelings, thoughts, and deeds, so long as they remain subject to their
natural instincts. It was by the eradication, and not the education, of
these instincts, that the character of the human being she was moulding
was to be determined. The first great preliminary process, so soon as the
child manifested any evidence of intelligent and persistent
self-determination, was to break her will.

There is no doubt that this was a legitimate conclusion from the teaching
of Priest Pemberton, but it required a colder and harder nature than his
own to carry out many of his dogmas to their practical application. He
wrought in the pure mathematics, so to speak, of theology, and left the