infirmity into this shape, viz., that if I were summoned to seek aid
for a perishing fellow-creature, and that I could obtain that aid only
by facing a vast company of critical or sneering faces, I might,
perhaps, shrink basely from the duty. It is true that no such case had
ever actually occurred; so that it was a mere romance of casuistry to
tax myself with cowardice so shocking. But, to feel a doubt, was to
feel condemnation; and the crime that _might_ have been was, in my
eyes, the crime that _had_ been. Now, however, all was changed; and
for any thing which regarded my sister's memory, in one hour I received
a new heart. Once in Westmoreland I saw a case resembling it. I saw
a ewe suddenly put off and abjure her own nature, in a service of
love--yes, slough it as completely as ever serpent sloughed his skin.
Her lamb had fallen into a deep trench, from which all escape was
hopeless without the aid of man. And to a man she advanced, bleating
clamorously, until he followed her and rescued her beloved. Not less
was the change in myself. Fifty thousand sneering faces would not have
troubled me _now_ in any office of tenderness to my sister's memory.
Ten legions would not have repelled me from seeking her, if there
had been a chance that she could be found. Mockery! it was lost upon
me. Laughter! I valued it not. And when I was taunted insultingly with
"my girlish tears," that word "_girlish_" had no sting for me, except
as a verbal echo to the one eternal thought of my heart--that a girl
was the sweetest thing which I, in my short life, had known; that a
girl it was who had crowned the earth with beauty, and had opened to
my thirst fountains of pure celestial love, from which, in this world,
I was to drink no more.

Now began to unfold themselves the consolations of solitude, those
consolations which only I was destined to taste; now, therefore, began
to open upon me those fascinations of solitude, which, when acting as