just the other way from what it has been all my life! -- I
might as good take hold of this moving earth with my two
fingers and give it a twist to go westwards. --"

Elizabeth shut up her book, and laid it on the moss beside
her.

"Repent? -- yes, it's an obligation. Oh what shall I do with
it! --"

She would have liked to do with it as she did with her head --
lay it down.

"These wrong things are iron-strong in me -- how can I unscrew
them from their fastenings, and change all the out-goings and
in-comings of my mind? -- when the very hands that must do the
work have a bent the wrong way. How can I? -- I am strong for
evil -- I am weak as a child for good."

"I will try!" she said the next instant, lifting her head up --
"I will _try_ to do what I can. -- But that is not changing my
whole inner way of feeling -- that is not _repenting_. Perhaps it
will come. Or is this determination of mine to _try_, the
beginning of it? I do not know that it is -- I cannot be sure
that it is. No -- one might wish to be a good lawyer, without
at all being willing to go through all the labour and pains
for it which Winthrop Landholm has taken. -- No, _this_ is not,
or it may not be, repentance -- I cannot be sure that it is
anything. But will it not come? or how can I get it? How alone
I am from all counsel and help! -- Still it must be my duty to
try -- to try to do particular things right, as they come up,
even though I cannot feel right all at once. And if I try,
won't the help come, and the knowledge? -- What a confusion it
is! In the midst of it all it is my duty to repent, and I
haven't the least idea how to set about it, and I can't do it!
O I wish Winthrop Landholm was here! --"

Elizabeth pondered the matter a good deal; and the more she
thought about it, the worse the confusion grew. The duty
seemed more imminent, the difficulty more obstinate. She was
driven at last, unwillingly again, to her former ressource --
what she could not give herself, to ask to have given her. She
did it, with tears again, that were wrung from breaking pride
and weary wishing. More quietly then she resolved to lay off
perplexing care, and to strive to meet the moment's duty, as
it arose. And by this time with a very humbled and quieted
brow, she went on with her chapter. The words of the next
verse caught her eye and her mind at once.

"For this is he that was spoken of by the prophet Esaias,
saying, The voice of one crying in the wi