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CHAPTER IV.

"PRECEPTRESS OF THE NATURAL SCIENCES."

We were so heart-broken after my sister left us, that a few weeks later the old home was given up and by the kindness of Professor Jones I went to the Northwestern Female College, whence I had graduated three years earlier, as teacher of the natural sciences.

My brother was married July 3, 1862, about four weeks after my sister's death, to her class-mate and my friend, Mary Bannister, and their home was in Denver, Col., for several years, where he founded the M. E. Church and Seminary, and was a Presiding Elder when but twenty-seven years old. Thus unbefriended and alone, for the first time in my life homeless and for the first bereft, I returned to the scene of my girlish escapades a thoughtful, chastened woman—at least I thought so, but my pupils of those days declare, to my astonishment, that I was "full of fun." Surely, they did not know my heart as here revealed:

August 29, 1862.—On Monday I move over to my Alma Mater, the Northwestern Female College. I am elected "Preceptress of Natural Sciences." Very humbly and sincerely I pray to God that I may be good over there and do good. I was wild and wicked as a pupil; in the same building may I be consistent and a Christian as a teacher. The last days are passing in this broken home. Life changes so, Thy heart must ache for us, O God, but that Thou knowest we are soon to enter the unchanging home. I have been at camp-meeting four days. It is a glorious place, I love it dearly. God has brought me nearer to Himself. My Sunday-school girl, Jennie, is trying to be good, and her noble sister Hattie, and ever so many more. What names I could write here of those for whom I pray and hope, who have not yet come to the light. Help me to act aright in these my new relations! I want to live a good life and get ready to go to my sister in heaven. I am afraid that Mary's death will kill my mother.

August 31.

"Man may trouble and distress me,

"Twill but drive me to Thy breast. Life with trials hard may press me, Heaven will bring the sweeter rest."

170

As Much a Teacher as Herself."

September 2.-Sitting in my room at the "Female College," a teacher regularly installed in a ladies' school. The sensation is agreeable. I have a natural love of girls, and to have them around me as pupils and friends will be delightful. To think that I am sitting here in the room that was Luella Clark's, my poet friend, as much a teacher as herself; my dear old books around me, my pictures and familiar things; and then such admirable girls to teach, Emma, Hattie, and the rest. Went for the last time to the class-meeting of which I am so fond, at Dr. Bannister's, since I must as a teacher attend here at the college. George Strobridge led it. Kate Kidder and Josephine Evans came home with me here to the steps below.

September 7.-Sabbath evening. My first Sabbath in the college. All the teachers are at church except myself. It is sweet and full, busy and fatiguing, at once, the life I lead. In the parlor to-night, how beautiful was the grouping after tea: the graceful figures of the girls, Miss Fisk at the piano, Captain Jones with his wife, Dr. Charlie, and spiritual-faced Professor with his wife, and the children, all of them soon to start for China, where Professor has been appointed consul; the kind old father and mother looking on contentedly at their three handsome sons; the folding-doors affording glimpses of the piazzas; music in the air. I liked it. The bell rang for church, the picture dissolved. Professor did not die, as we all thought he would last winter. He is well and going on a voyage half around the world. Mary, my sister Mary, who went with me to see him in his illness, took that longest of all voyages in his stead!

Am reading Peter Bayne's "Christian Life." It will help me to prepare to go to Mary. I wish everything might.

September 8.-After school hours I ached—there are so many flights of stairs, forty in a day or more. Went home at dinner time. Father and mother are soon to go away. Oh, mother, with your sad, sad face, and your black dress! Heaven has much to restore to you for all your weary years! I pray God to show me how I can be most comforting to you, how I can justly fill an only daughter's place. Life reaches out many hands for me, with manifold voices. I am intensely alive. I, who am to lie so still and cold beside my sister Mary.

Sabbath morning, September 14.-Sitting in my room dressed in a pretty black silk wrapper that mother and Miss Burroughs made. The autumn sunlight is pouring in. I am here, but Mary, who was always with me, where is she? The question mocks me with its own echo. Where is she who was so merry, who knew the people that I know, who studied the books that I study, who liked "Bleak House," who laughed at Micawber and Traddles and read the daily Tribune. Where is she who picked up pebbles with me by the lake and ran races with me in the garden; who sang Juniata and Star-spangled Banner? She was so much alive, I can not think of her as disembodied and living still. Then there is that horrible doctrine held by many who are wise and good, that the soul is unconscious until the resurrection. That idea worries me not a little. Then, too, I am coming right straight on to the same doom: I, who sit here this bright morning, with carefully made toilet, attentive eyes, ears open to every sound I, with my

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thousand thoughts, my steady-beating heart, shall lie there so still, so cold and for so long. It is coming toward me every moment, such a fate as that! But my religion tells me that my life shall be unending. One interpretation of my creed says that consciousness shall be uninterrupted both here and there, that fruition awaits us in the years where every minute shall be full of overflowing and nothing shall have power to disappoint. How much a human heart can bear, and how it can adjust itself! Four months ago today I thought if Mary died I should be crazed; it made me shiver just to take the thought on my brain's edge, and yet to-day I think of Mary dead just as naturally as I used to think of her alive. Yet God knows how well Here on a piece of blot

I loved my sister and how deeply she is mourned. ting paper I keep in my book is her name written over and over again in her careless round hand. She used to borrow this same piece of paper to dry the fresh pages of her own journal not many weeks ago. Oh, dainty little hand, I should not like to touch you now!

September 17.-This young person, F. E. W., reports herself tired and proceeds to show cause therefor. Rose a little after six, made my toilet for the day and helped to arrange the room; went to breakfast, looked over the lessons of the day, although I had already done that yesterday; conducted devotions in the chapel; heard advanced class in arithmetic, one in geome try, one in elementary algebra, one in Wilson's "Universal History"; talked with Miss Clark at noon; dined, rose from the table to take charge of an elocution class, next zoölogy, next geology, next physiology, next mineralogy, then came upstairs and sat down in my rocking-chair as one who would prefer to rise no more! Now I have to-morrow's lessons to go over.

September 18.-I have the sorrow to write here that Forest Home is sold. The time has been when I could not for a moment have contemplated the probability of its passing into other hands than ours who created and who loved it. Alas for the changes of the great year of my history, 1862. I am to lose sight of the old, familiar landmarks, old things are passing from me whose love is for old things. I am pushing out all by myself into the wide, wide sea.

"The shadow of a great rock in a weary land."

October 3.- My twenty-third birthday has come and gone without even a passing remark. On Monday my brother Oliver started for Denver Col., after having been ordained a Methodist minister, at Joliet, by Bishop Baker. Mother is going East to see our relatives; she greatly needs the change. Father will board in Chicago this winter, probably, and for the first time in my life I shall have no home. There is a grave in Rose Hill cemetery; most of these changes may be traced to it as their cause.

"The same fond mother bent at night

O'er each fair sleeper's brow;
She had each folded flower in sight,

Where are those dreamers now?"

October II. Have been ill a week since I wrote last. Dear, unforgetful mother has nursed me up again. It almost paid to be sick to have

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people so sweet and mindful. My girls were marvels of loving kindness. Well, I conclude that I can not stand very much, mot so much as I supposed. I am just a trifle discouraged to-night about the prospect before me. thought this last week as I lay in the bed, that perhaps God, seeing how I wonder about that other life, would let me out into it, and it would seem so natural to my sister Mary to have me with her once again. I refresh myself little with reading nowadays. Miss Clark and I corrected the compositions all the evening. I stipulated for Ada's in my lot. Ada, dear, refined girl, fit to be Charles Gifford's sister. I like the ideal, Heaven is that! We get hints of it here though, some of us. Luella Clark does and it is her chief charm for me. Things are not so endlessly commonplace to her as they are to most folks. A red leaf out of the woods, a bouquet, a cluster of grapes, these are a great deal to her. She puts her ear close down to nature, listens and hears. I wish I might do this more, but then I shall when mortality drops off, and I have those acute, tense senses of my spiritual self that Swedenborg tells us of, and I believe him. Ella Simpson, dear unfailing friend, for all these years, has had my classes while I have been ill. Dr. Tiffany is our minister and I am more thankful than I can express for the prospect of hearing good preaching once more.

October 12-Up here in my room, while the people go to church, I watch the long procession of young ladies file out along the walks and through the trees. The gate under the pretty arch bangs together as the last one passes through. One of my pupils, Josie, is sitting with me, and I have made her talk, trying to draw her out a little, in a friendly way, asking her if she likes her studies, if she likes to learn new things, if she likes to read refined books, if she loves people, if she tries to make them love her, if she tries to do them good, if she has ambitions and what she expects from life. She answers with frankness and enthusiasm. There is rare delicacy in the girl. Then we sit by the window in her room. This was Mattie Hill's once, and in it I have played many a school-girl prank I tell Josie so as we sit here. She lets me into the history of her life, which has been sorrowful, and we make a few wondering remarks over God's providences. Then we talk a little of being good, and I speak somewhat of my sister Mary, and how she lived and died, while I get a little nearer in heart to pretty, sad-faced Josie. As I turn to leave her room, she kisses me, and says, "You are the first one that has talked to me about being good since I have been in this school. I wish you would do so often." I go back to my room, praying that God may make me well again, and that I may love all these girls and they me, and that I may do them only good. Then I sit down cozy and contented to read Harbaugh's "Sainted Dead," looking out often at the window on the bright trees and sunshine of this pleasant, pleasant world, thinking my thoughts between the author's sentences, and feeling very full of wonder about my sister Mary. I learn that this author thinks heaven is a place somewhere far away, and that the soul never sleeps, not even for a single moment, and I find this sweet quotation: “Selig sind die das Himmelreich haben, denn sie sollen nach Hause kommen.” (Blessed are they who have heaven within them, for they shall come home.)

The Little Cat.

173 I think the book has not a page worth that. I read a chapter in my German Testament, "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden." Then the folks come back from church, and my queer little pupil, Lizzie B. comes to my room. I ask Miss Fisk, my room-mate, about the sermon, she comments briefly, the bell rings, and they all go down to dinner. My room-mate brings me mine in her quiet, kindly way, and Misses Harvey, Sewall and Bunnell sit around me while I eat. I like the toast, and have some zest for the delicate, amber-colored jelly. Miss Sewall tells me of her home between the two Miami rivers. Miss Holmes comes in to get excused from "Biblical Antiquities." My dear Luella Clark enters with the last Repository, and Dr. Johnson's book of sermons labeled "Consolation." She tells me she went "way up to Professor Noyes' for the book on purpose to read from it to me." How very kind she has been to me always, when I was a pupil and now when we are both "faculty folks"! The girls go off to Sunday-school, Miss Clark sits with me and we talk. She gets me to wrap up, and we go to walk in the garden, for she thinks a sun bath is what I need. Swedenborg's book is in her hand, brought at my suggestion, and she reads here and there as we sit on the stile, while we talk of the Swedish seer and his professed revelations. I incline to look with favor on it all, and say, Why should not God in some way supplement that mysterious apocalypse of John ; for we are all longing to know more about the other life—at least I am, in these days." She says Swedenborg's belief is too materialistic, but his ideas of special providences she likes exceedingly. A little gray cat comes and sits by us. We wonder at the graceful little creature, and fall into a dozen queries over it, for we are in a querying mood. Miss Clark takes it up in her arms, smooths its fur, and says, “Poor creature! You noticed us and followed us with your big, curious eyes. You make the very best of life you can; you like to jump and play about, and it grieves me to think how your life will all flicker out after a little, not to revive again." Then I tell her how fond I am of the kind old "Country Parson" ("A. K. H. B."), and repeat what he said to his horse, "Old Boy," out in the stable, in that genial, generous passage with this sentence in it: "For you, my poor fellow-creature, I think with sorrow, as I write upon your head, there remains no such immortality as remaius for me." Then Miss Clark tells me anecdotes about her pets when she was a little child, away off in New England, where I have never been. I fall to wondering about this strange Being who made the little cat and gave to her feet their active motion, who pushed out of the ground the little flower that Miss Clark plucked for me from the borders as she walked, who made my favorite heliotrope. I hold two leaves of it on the palm of my hand, one green with sap, one black with frost, and wonder at the difference between the two. I see the leaves dying on the beautiful trees of the college grove, and I wonder what Gcd thinks as He sees this world that He has made, and we poor, blind creatures groping along through it. Then I remember that "God is love," and that thought quiets me. We go into the house, up to my room again, and Miss Clark begins to read to me from the book she brought. Soon comes a low rap at the door, and my friend Emma

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