er she had made over the first chapter of
Matthew; but that was rather the fruit of past thought; she
did not think in those days; she gave up to feeling; and the
hours were a change from bitter and violent sorrow to dull and
listless quiet. Conscience sometimes spoke of duties resolved
upon; impatient pain always answered that their time was not
now.

The first thing that roused her was a little letter from
Winthrop, which came with the pieces of furniture and stores
he sent up to her order. It was but a word, -- or two words;
one of business, to say what he had done for her; and one of
kindness, to say what he hoped she was doing for herself. Both
words were brief, and cool; but with them, with the very
handwriting of them, came a waft of that atmosphere of
influence -- that silent breath of truth which every character
breathes -- which in this instance was sweetened with airs from
heaven. The image of the writer rose before her brightly, in
its truth and uprightness and high and fixed principle; and
though Elizabeth wept bitter tears at the miserable contrast
of her own, they were more healing tears than she had shed all
those days. When she dried them, it was with a new mind, to
live no more hours like those she had been living. Something
less distantly unlike him she could be, and would be. She rose
and went into the house, while her eyes were yet red, and gave
her patient and unwearied attention, for hours, to details of
household arrangements that needed it. Her wits were not
wandering, nor her eyes; nor did they suffer others to wander.
Then, when it was all done, she took her bonnet and went back
to her old wood-place and her bible, with an humbler and
quieter spirit than she had ever brought to it before. It was
the fifth chapter of Matthew now.

The first beatitude puzzled her. She did not know what was
meant by 'poor in spirit,' and she could not satisfy herself.
She passed it as something to be made out by and by, and went
on to the others. There were obligations enough.

"'Meek?'" said Elizabeth, -- "I suppose if there is anything
in the world I am _not_, it is meek. I am the very, very
opposite. What can I do with this? It is like a fire in my
veins. Can _I_ cool it? And if I could control the outward
seeming of it, that would not be the change of the thing
itself. Besides, I couldn't, I must _be_ meek, if I am ever to
seem so."

She went on sorrowfully to the next.

"'Hunger and thirst after r