Theresa de Cepeda died in 1582, greatly beloved and revered for her
strict but gentle life, her great and helpful charities, and her sincere
desire to benefit her fellow-men. After her death, so great was the
respect paid her that she was canonized, as it is called: that is,
lifted up as an example of great goodness to the world; and she is
to-day known and honored among devout Roman Catholics as St. Theresa of
Avila.

Whatever we may think of the peculiar way in which her life was spent;
however we may regard the story of her troubles with her conscience, her
understanding of what she deemed her duty, and her sinking of what might
have been a happy and joyous life in the solitude and severity of a
convent, we cannot but think of her as one who wished to do right, and
who desired above all else to benefit the world in which she lived and
labored. Her story is that of a most extraordinary and remarkable woman,
who devoted her life to what she deemed the thing demanded of her.
Could we not, all of us, profitably attempt to live in something like a
kindred spirit to that helpful and unselfish one that actuated this girl
of the Spanish sierras?

"Here and there is born a Saint Theresa," says George Eliot, "foundress
of nothing, whose loving heart-beats and sobs after an unattained
goodness tremble off and are dispersed among hindrances, instead of
centring in some long-recognizable deed."

But if a girl or boy, desiring to do right, will disregard the
hindrances, and not simply sit and sob after an unattained goodness--if,
instead, they will but do the duty nearest at hand manfully and
well, the reward will come in something even more desirable than a
"long-recognizable deed." It will come in the very self-gratification
that will at last follow every act of courtesy, of friendliness, and
of self-denial, and such a life will be of more real value to the world
than all the deeds of all the crusaders, or than even the stern and
austere charities of a Saint Theresa.

ELIZABETH OF TUDOR: THE GIRL OF THE HERTFORD MANOR.

(Afterward Queen Elizabeth of England; the "Good Queen Bess.") A.D.
1548.

The iron-shod hoofs of the big gray courser rang sharply on the
frozen ground, as, beneath the creaking boughs of the long-armed oaks,
Launcelot Crue, the Lord Protector's fleetest courser-man, galloped
across the Hertford fells or hills, and reined up his horse within the
great gates of Hatfield manor-house.

"From the Lord