ct, like a sermon. To make Him
real is the only way to make our own spirits real to ourselves.

I think more gratefully now of the verses I learned from the Bible and
the Hymn-Book than of almost anything that came to me in that time of
beginnings. The whole Hymn-Book was not for me then, any more than the
whole Bible. I took from both only what really belonged to me. To be
among those who found in the true sources of faith and adoration, was
like breathing in my native air, though I could not tell anything about
the land from which I had come. Much that was put in the way of us
children to climb by, we could only stumble over; but around and above
the roughnesses of the road, the pure atmosphere of worship was felt
everywhere, the healthiest atmosphere for a child's soul to breathe in.

I had learned a great many hymns before the family took any notice of
it. When it came to the knowledge of my most motherly sister Emilie,--I
like to call her that, for she was as fond of early rising as Chaucer's
heroine:--

"Up rose the sun, and up rose Emilie;"

and it is her own name, with a very slight change,--she undertook to
see how many my small memory would contain. She promised me a new book,
when I should have learned fifty; and that when I could repeat any one
of a hundred hymns, she would teach me to write. I earned the book when
I was about four years old. I think it was a collection of some of Jane
Taylor's verses. "For Infant Minds," was part of the title. I did not
care for it, however, nearly so much as I did for the old, thumb-worn
"Watts' and Select Hymns." Before I was five I bad gone beyond the
stipulated hundred.

A proud and happy child I was, when I was permitted to dip a goose
quill into an inkstand, and make written letters, instead of printing
them with a pencil on a slate.

My sister prepared a neat little writing-book for me, and told me not
to make a mark in it except when she was near to tell me what to do. In
my self-sufficient impatience to get out of "pothooks and trammels"
into real letters and words I disobeyed her injunction, and disfigured
the pages with numerous tell-tale blots. Then I hid the book away under
the garret eaves, and refused to bring it to light again. I was not
allowed to resume my studies in penmanship for some months, in
consequence. But when I did learn to write, Emilie was my teacher, and
she made me take great pains with my p's and q's.

It is always a mistake to cra