LETTER III.

EARLY DAYS.


I grew up a healthy, active, light-hearted girl, wholly devoted to
reading and to rural occupations. The latter, particularly gardening,
served as a counterpoise to the sedentary temptation that would have
proved physically injurious; but laying in, as I daily did, a plentiful
store of romantic adventure or fascinating poetry for rumination when
abroad, my mind was unprofitably occupied at all times, to the exclusion
of better things. On Sundays, indeed, I made it a point of conscience to
abstain from light reading; and, as far as I could, to banish from my
thoughts the week's acquisition of folly. I went to church, and read the
Bible at home with a sermon of Blair's, or some similar writer wholly
destitute of gospel light; and I generally had a short fit of
compunction, on that day, for having been so wholly absorbed in worldly
things during the preceding six; for even then God was striving with me
to bring me unto himself, and many a strong conviction did I forcibly
stifle. The warmth of my natural feelings, the ardor with which I
entered into every thing that interested them, and a sort of energy that
always longed to be doing where any cause that I considered good was to
be promoted--all these would have rendered me a working character, had I
obeyed the gracious call to go into the Lord's vineyard. I say a call,
because though as yet I know nothing whatever of the gospel, I could not
overlook or misunderstand the reiterated injunctions of Scripture to