attain any object,
but just for discipline and obedience."

"As for the early Christians, poor souls! they had mortifications enough
from the heathen around them, without giving themselves trouble to make
troubles," said my Aunt Kezia. "And the old monks, poor misguided dirty
things! I hope you don't admire them. But what do you mean by saying
they were not means to an end, but only discipline? If that were so,
discipline was the end of them. But, my dear, discipline is a
sharp-edged tool which men do well to let alone, except for children.
We are prone to make sad blunders when we discipline ourselves. That
tool is safer in God's hands than in ours."

"But there is so much poetry in mortification!" sighed Amelia.

"I am glad if you can see it," said my Aunt Kezia. "I can't. Poetry in
cabbage-stalks, eaten with all the mud on, and ditch water scooped up in
a dirty pannikin! There would be a deal more poetry in needles and
thread, and soap and water. Making verses is all very well in its
place; but you try to make a pudding of poetry, and you'll come badly
off for dinner."

"Dinner!" said Amelia, contemptuously.

"Yes, my dear, dinner. You dine once a day, I believe."

"Dear, I never care what I eat," cried Amelia. "The care of the body is
entirely beneath those who have learned to prize the superlative value
of the mind."

My Aunt Kezia laughed. "My dear," said she, "if you were a little older
I might reason with you. But you are just at that age when girls take
up with every silly notion they come across, and carry it ever so much
farther, and just make regular geese of themselves. 'Tis a comfort to
hope you will grow out of it. Ten years hence, if we are both alive, I
shall find you making pies and cutting out bodices like other sensible
women. At least I hope so."

"Never!" cried Amelia. "I never could demean myself to be just an
every-day creature like that!"

"I am sorry for your husband," said my Aunt Kezia, bluntly, "and still
more for yourself. If you set up to be an uncommon woman, the chances
are that instead of rising above the common, you will just sink below
it, into one of those silly things that spend their time sipping tea and
flirting fans, and making men think all women foolish and unstable. And
if you do that--well, all I have to say is, may God forgive you!--Cary,
I want some jumballs for tea. Just go and see to them."

So away I went to the kitchen, and heard no more