a great deal easier than to Aunt
Miranda or even to Uncle Jerry Cobb. There were things I could say to
Him that I could never say to anybody else, and saying them always made
me happy and contented.

When Mr. Baxter asked me last year about joining the church, I told him
I was afraid I did not understand God quite well enough to be a real
member.

"So you don't quite understand God, Rebecca?" he asked, smiling.
"Well, there is something else much more important, which is, that
He understands you! He understands your feeble love, your longings,
desires, hopes, faults, ambitions, crosses; and that, after all, is what
counts! Of course you don't understand Him! You are overshadowed by His
love, His power, His benignity, His wisdom; that is as it should be!
Why, Rebecca, dear, if you could stand erect and unabashed in God's
presence, as one who perfectly comprehended His nature or His purposes,
it would be sacrilege! Don't be puzzled out of your blessed inheritance
of faith, my child; accept God easily and naturally, just as He accepts
you!"

"God never puzzled me, Mr. Baxter; it isn't that," I said; "but the
doctrines do worry me dreadfully."

"Let them alone for the present," Mr Baxter said. "Anyway, Rebecca, you
can never prove God; you can only find Him!"

"Then do you think I have really experienced religion, Mr. Baxter?" I
asked. "Am I the beginnings of a Christian?"

"You are a dear child of the understanding God!" Mr. Baxter said; "and I
say it over to myself night and morning so that I can never forget it."

* * * * *

The year is nearly over and the next few months will be lived in the
rush and whirlwind of work that comes before graduation. The bell for
philosophy class will ring in ten minutes, and as I have been writing
for nearly two hours, I must learn my lesson going up the Academy
hill. It will not be the first time; it is a grand hill for learning! I
suppose after fifty years or so the very ground has become soaked with
knowledge, and every particle of air in the vicinity is crammed with
useful information.

I will put my book into my trunk (having no blessed haymow hereabouts)
and take it out again,--when shall I take it out again?

After graduation perhaps I shall be too grown up and too busy to write
in a Thought Book; but oh, if only something would happen worth putting
down; something strange; something unusual; something different from the
things that happen every day in Riverboro and Ed