d whom I admired very much
for what I could not help seeing,--her unusual sweetness of
disposition. I read Mrs. Sherwood's "Infant's Progress," and I made a
personal application of it, picturing myself as the naughty, willful
"Playful," and my sister Lida as the saintly little "Peace."

This book gave me a morbid, unhappy feeling, while yet it had something
of the fascination of the "Pilgrim's Progress," of which it is an
imitation. I fancied myself followed about by a fiend-like boy who
haunted its pages, called "Inbred-Sin;" and the story implied that
there was no such thing as getting rid of him. I began to dislike all
boys on his account. There was one who tormented my sister and me--we
only knew him by name--by jumping out at us from behind doorways or
fences on our way to school, making horrid faces at us. "Inbred-Sin," I
was certain, looked just like him; and the two, strangely blended in
one hideous presence, were the worst nightmare of my dreams. There was
too much reality about that "Inbreed-Sin." I felt that I was acquainted
with him. He was the hateful hero of the little allegory, as Satan is
of "Paradise Lost."

I liked lessons that came to me through fables and fairy tales,
although, in reading Aesop, I invariably skipped the "moral" pinned on
at the end, and made one for myself, or else did without.

Mrs. Lydia Maria Child's story of "The Immortal Fountain," in the
"Girl's Own Book,"--which it was the joy of my heart to read, although
it preached a searching sermon to me,--I applied in the same way that I
did the "Infant's Progress." I thought of Lida as the gentle, unselfish
Rose, and myself as the ugly Marion. She was patient and obliging, and
I felt that I was the reverse. She was considered pretty, and I knew
that I was the reverse of that, too. I wondered if Lida really had
bathed in the Immortal Fountain, and oh, how I wished I could find the
way there! But I feared that trying to do so would be of no use; the
fairies would cross their wands to keep me back, and their wings would
darken at my approach.

The book that I loved first and best, and lived upon in my childhood,
was "Pilgrim's Progress." It was as a story that I cared for it,
although I knew that it meant something more,--something that was
already going on in my own heart and life. Oh, how I used to wish that
I too could start off on a pilgrimage! It would be so much easier than
the continual, discouraging struggle to be good!

The