happy. I took the children up to my
closet, and tried to make them share in all my pleasures while I
tried to enjoy theirs. I made amends for my fault. From that time, I
began a religious self-scrutiny and censorship. I watched myself
very carefully, and for every fault I did penance in my closet. When
I shut myself up on account of wrong doing, I would not allow myself
to read or do any thing but think of my fault. The words of my
mother which had been uttered without much serious thought, were as
a law to me. I became, if possible, too sensitive to my own defects;
it made me rather egotistical. It seemed as if my heart had become
suddenly changed. I was, as it were, born again; a new life began in
me.

One penance that I subjected myself to was to go and confess to my
mother all my faults, even the most trifling. She feared that this
continual self-reference would make me, as it did, an egotist, and
she, one day, advised me to be satisfied with seeing my wrong doings
and acknowledging them to myself, and to try to correct them without
speaking of them to her. I begged her, with tears, to let me have my
own way, for that telling her all helped me greatly; and I think,
for a time, it did. The necessity of confiding all that is in our
hearts, and all we do that is wrong, to a being whom we entirely
respect and love, and in whose purity we confide, is a great check
upon evil thoughts and evil deeds. One instance I well remember of
the good effect of my confession. My mother insisted upon careful
and neat habits in all things. She would not allow us to throw down
our caps or bonnets. They must all be hung up on pegs in the hall,
and each child had a peg of his or her own. As we often forgot the
command, our mother, in order to remind us, made a law, one winter,
that whoever broke the rule should, when the apples were distributed
in the evening, have none. One day, all of us came in to supper in
haste from play, and two out of four of us forgot to hang up their
hats--my sister was one, and I the other. The footman picked up my
hat, and hung it up in the right place. At the time of distributing
the apples, my mother gave me a fine one, and said, "Alice never
forgets her hat. No one forgets now but Jeannie. She is very
careless, and must have no apple to-night." I was mean enough to
take my apple and be silent; but I could not eat it. Still there
seemed to be a spell over me; and, wretched as I was, I could not
speak and co