was a Calvinist, very strict, but she was always
reading 'Abelard and Eloisa,' and crying over it. At sixteen
I said to her: 'Mother, you've brought me up well; you've kept
me strict. Why don't I feel that regeneration they talk of?
why an't I one of the elect?' And she talked to me about the
potter using his clay as he pleased; and I said: 'Mother, God
is not a potter: He's a perfect being; and he can't treat the
vessels he makes, anyhow, but with perfect justice, or he's no
God. So I'm no Calvinist.'"'

* * * * *

Here is a very different picture:--

'---- has infinite grace and shading in her character: a
springing and tender fancy, a Madonna depth of meditative
softness, and a purity which has been unstained, and keeps her
dignified even in the most unfavorable circumstances. She was
born for the love and ornament of life. I can scarcely
forbear weeping sometimes, when I look on her, and think what
happiness and beauty she might have conferred. She is as yet
all unconscious of herself, and she rather dreads being with
me, because I make her too conscious. She was on the point,
at ----, of telling me all she knew of herself; but I saw
she dreaded, while she wished, that I should give a local
habitation and a name to what lay undefined, floating before
her, the phantom of her destiny; or rather lead her to give
it, for she always approaches a tragical clearness when
talking with me.'

* * * * *

'---- has been to see us. But it serves not to know such
a person, who perpetually defaces the high by such strange
mingling with the low. It certainly is not pleasant to hear of
God and Miss Biddeford in a breath. To me, this hasty attempt
at skimming from the deeps of theosophy is as unpleasant as
the rude vanity of reformers. Dear Beauty! where, where, amid
these morasses and pine barrens, shall we make thee a temple?
where find a Greek to guard it,--clear-eyed, deep-thoughted,
and delicate enough to appreciate the relations and gradations
which nature always observes?'

An acute and illuminated woman, who, in this age of indifferentism,
holds on with both hands to the creed of the Pilgrims, writes of
Margaret, whom she saw but once:--"She looked very sensible, but as
if contending with ill health and duties. She lay, all th