robin (the migratory
thrush), a bold, cheery note, full of summer life; and after those the
chief was the bobolink, singing up into the sky like the skylark, and
with which we connected the ripening of the strawberry, the merriest
and most rollicking of all bird songs, as that of the bluebird was the
tenderest. Then came the hermit thrush, heard only in the depth of
the forest, shy and remote in his life and nesting, and the
whip-poor-will, in the evening. Each was a new leaf turned over in my
book of life, the reading of which was my only happiness. What else,
or more, could be expected of an existence hedged in by the terrors of
eternity, the hauntings of an inevitable condemnation, unless I could
obtain some mysterious renovation, only attainable through an act of
divine grace which no human merit could entitle me to, and which I
tried in vain to win the benediction of? And how dreary seemed the
heaven I was set to win--no birds, no flowers, no fields or forests,
only the eternal continuation of the hymn-singing and protracted
meetings, in which, in our system, consisted the glorification of
God, which was the end and aim of our existences! I wonder how many
religious parents remember the misery of child life under such
influences.

The struggles of conscience through which I went in those days can be
imagined by no one, and I can hardly realize them myself, except by
recalling little incidents which show what the pressure must have
been. I have mentioned an escapade of this period, connected with
the last flogging my father gave me, but of which that was only the
secondary cause, determining the moment but not the movement. It was
a matter of conscience at bottom. My mother had, when I was about six
years old, taken a little octoroon girl of three, the illegitimate
daughter of a quadroon in our neighborhood, with the intention
of bringing her up as a servant. The child was quick-witted and
irrepressible, and disputes began between us as soon as she felt at
home. I suppose she must have been inclined to impertinence, for she
had to be whipped, and as at her age no difference of condition was
evident to her, she became a severe trial to my equanimity. Every
outbreak of temper induced by her conduct toward me became occasion
of a period of penitence, for I was taught that such outbreaks were
sinful, and as neither had I the amount of self-control that I needed
to overlook the provocations she gave, nor had she the po