and had only been home a month that very day, in order to account for my
knowing so little about her tastes and habits of mind. We went on talking a
little more in the same way, and if I were writing for young people only,
I should be tempted to go on a little farther with the account of what we
said to each other; for it might help some of them to see that the thing
they like best should, circumstances and conscience permitting, be made the
centre from which they start to learn; that they should go on enlarging
their knowledge all round from that one point at which God intended them to
begin. But at length we fell into a silence, a very happy one on my part;
for I was more than delighted to find that this one too of my children was
following after the truth--wanting to do what was right, namely, to obey
the word of the Lord, whether openly spoken to all, or to herself in the
voice of her own conscience and the light of that understanding which is
the candle of the Lord. I had often said to myself in past years, when
I had found myself in the company of young ladies who announced their
opinions--probably of no deeper origin than the prejudices of their
nurses--as if these distinguished them from all the world besides; who were
profound upon passion and ignorant of grace; who had not a notion whether a
dress was beautiful, but only whether it was of the newest cut--I had often
said to myself: "What shall I do if my daughters come to talk and think
like that--if thinking it can be called?" but being confident that
instruction for which the mind is not prepared only lies in a rotting
heap, producing all kinds of mental evils correspondent to the results of
successive loads of food which the system cannot assimilate, my hope had
been to rouse wise questions in the minds of my children, in place of
overwhelming their digestions with what could be of no instruction or
edification without the foregoing appetite. Now my Constance had begun to
ask me questions, and it made me very happy. We had thus come a long way
nearer to each other; for however near the affection of human animals may
bring them, there are abysses between soul and soul--the souls even of