hearing before I was ten years old, was owing to a paralysis induced by
such severe treatment. God, however, had his own purposes to work out,
which neither Satan nor man could hinder. He overruled all for the
furtherance of his own gracious designs.

Shut out by this last dispensation from my two delightful resources,
music and conversation, I took refuge in books with tenfold avidity. By
this time I had added the British poets generally to my original stock,
together with such reading as is usually prescribed for young ladies;
and I underwent the infliction of reading aloud to my mother the seven
mortal volumes of Sir Charles Grandison. It was in the fulfilment of
this awful task that I acquired a habit particularly mischievous and
ensnaring--that of reading mechanically, with a total abstraction of
mind from what I was about. This became the easier to me from the
absence of all external sound; and its consequences are exceedingly
distressing to this day, as experienced in a long-indulged, and
afterwards most bitterly lamented wandering of the mind in prayer and in
reading the Scriptures. In fact, through the prevalence of this habit,
my devotions, always very punctually performed, became such an utter
lip-service, as frequently to startle and terrify my conscience, when I
found myself saying prayers and thinking idle songs or scraps of plays;
but I regarded such transient pangs of remorse as a satisfaction for the
sin, and never dreamed of resisting the general habit.

Thus far I had led a town life, residing in the heart of a populous
city, enjoying indeed that noble garden, but daily more and more
absorbed in books of fancy. Happily, my health became so affected that a
removal into the country was judged necessary, and I forgave the doctors
all their past persecution of me, in consideration of their parting
injunctions, which were, that I was to have unbounded liberty; to live