tinctly told; but she
did not need to, with such lovers in her own family. Besides, how
could she find any one, in her eyes, equal to those brothers, and how
could she marry any one of lower merit? "I am satisfied," she writes,
"by long and delightful experience, that I can never love any body
better than my brothers. I have no expectation of ever finding their
equal in worth and attraction, therefore--do not be alarmed; I am not
on the verge of a vow of celibacy, nor have I the slightest intention
of adding any rash resolutions to the ghosts of those that have been
frightened to death by the terrors of maiden life; but therefore--I
shall never change my condition until I change my mind." This is at
the age of twenty-three.

Later in life, after many changes had come, she seems to have wished
she had not been so very hard to suit. Fifteen years roll away,
during which we see one suitor after another, dismissed, when she
writes in a journal not to be read in her life-time, "It is difficult
for one who began life as I did, the primary object of affection to
many, to come by degrees to be first to none, and still to have my
love remain in its full strength, and craving such returns as have no
substitute.... It is the necessity of a solitary condition, an
unnatural state.... From my own experience I would not advise any one
to remain unmarried, for my experience has been a singularly happy
one. My feelings have never been embittered by those slights and
taunts that the repulsive and neglected have to endure; there has been
no period of my life to the present moment when I might not have
allied myself respectably, and to those sincerely attached to me.... I
have troops of friends, some devotedly attached to me, and yet the
result of this very happy experience is that there is no substitute
for those blessings which Providence has placed first, and ordained
that they shall be purchased at the dearest sacrifice." Those who have
paid the price and purchased the blessings may have the satisfaction
of knowing that, according to Miss Sedgwick's mature opinion, they
have chosen the better part.

We might call this statement the Confessions of an Old Maid who might
have done better. She closes her testimony with an acknowledgment that
she "ought to be grateful and humble," and the "hope, through the
grace of God, to rise more above the world, to attain a higher and
happier state of feeling, to order my house for that better world