she grew older
she learned that she was to live in a world of errors, sorrows, and
sins, and the mere knowledge of their existence, by some peculiar
process of her wonderful mind, seemed to be the signal for their
combined attack upon her soul. She watched her thoughts until forbidden
topics were generated in her mind by the very act of watchfulness. She
then regarded herself as an accomplice with every profane image which
invaded her innocent imagination. She subjected herself to physical
mortifications and austerities of a whimsical yet severe character. She
aspired to the fate of holy women of old, who had suffered martyrdom,
and she finally resolved to enter a convent. She was then eleven years
old. She was placed in such an institution ostensibly for further
education, but with the intention on her part there to always remain. It
was like entering the vestibule of heaven. She records of her first
night there: "I lifted up my eyes to the heavens; they were unclouded
and serene; I imagined that I felt the presence of the Deity smiling on
my sacrifice, and already offering me a reward in the consolatory peace
of a celestial abode."

She was always an acute observer and a caustic commentator, and she soon
discovered that the cloister is not necessarily a celestial abode, and
that its inmates do not inevitably enjoy consolatory peace. She found
feminine spite there of the same texture with that wreaked by worldly
women upon each other, and she notes the cruel taunts which good, old,
ugly, and learned sister Sophia received from some stupid nuns, who, she
says, "were fond of exposing her defects because they did not possess
her talents." But her devotional fervor did not abate. She fainted under
the feeling of awe in the act of her first communion, for she literally
believed that her lips touched the very substance of her God, and
thereafter she was long brooded over by that perfect peace which passeth
understanding.

She remained there a year, when her destiny was changed by some domestic
events which made her services necessary to her parents, and she
returned home. Her resolution was unchanged, and she read and meditated
deeply upon the Philotee of Saint Francis de Sales, upon the manual of
Saint Augustine, and upon the polemical writings of Bossuet. But by this
time the leaven of dissent began to work in that powerful intellect, for
she remarks upon these works, that "favorable as they are to the cause
which they