me a weak waverer, and call me incorrigible. Sometimes I cannot pray
for months together, and when I do it is generally to ask for something
I want, not to praise or give thanks. But what a blank it is when one
cannot pray; when one has lost the power to conceive that there is a
something greater than man, to whom man is nevertheless all in all, and
to whom we may look for comfort in all times of our tribulation, and
for sympathy in all times of our wealth! To be able to give thanks to
God when one is happy is the most rapturous, and to be able to call
upon Him in the day of trouble is the most blessed, state of mind I
know. Yet I believe we should only pray for the possible. The leafless
tree may pray for the time of buds and blossoms; will the time come the
sooner? Perhaps not, but it will come."

"I must confess," she said on another occasion, "that I do have moments
of pure scepticism; but when I cannot believe in the existence of a
God, and a Beyond, I feel as if the sky were nearer, and weighed upon
me, so that I could not lift my head."

She thought religion consisted much more in doing right than in
believing right, and set morality above faith; but I think she had a
leaning towards the Roman Catholic religion nevertheless.

"It is a grand old faith," she said, "only it has certain ramifications
with which I should always quarrel, notably that of the Sacred Heart
with which Catholics deface their lovely Lady in the churches. I always
feel that such bad art cannot be good religion. When the Roman Catholic
religion commanded respect it expressed itself better--as in the days
when it carved itself in harmonies of solid stone, and wrote itself in
tint and tone on glowing canvases, and learnt to speak in thundering
mass and mighty hymns of praise! There are people who think these new