the church and among the poor. A queer view, some people
may think, for a girl to take of married life, but it was the natural
result of my living the life of the Early Church, of my enthusiasm for
religious work. To me a priest was a half-angelic creature, whose whole
life was consecrated to heaven; all that was deepest and truest in my
nature chafed against my useless days, longed for work, yearned to devote
itself, as I had read women saints had done, to the service of the church
and the poor, to the battling against sin and misery. "You will have more
opportunity for doing good as a clergyman's wife than as anything else,"
was one of the pleas urged on my reluctance. My ignorance of all that
marriage meant was as profound as though I had been a child of four, and
my knowledge of the world was absolutely _nil_. My darling mother meant
all that was happiest for me when she shielded me from all knowledge of
sorrow and of sin, when she guarded me from the smallest idea of the
marriage relation, keeping me ignorant as a baby till I left her home a
wife. But looking back now on all, I deliberately say that no more fatal
blunder can be made than to train a girl to womanhood in ignorance of all
life's duties and burdens, and then to let her face them for the first
time away from all the old associations, the old helps, the old refuge on
the mother's breast. That "perfect innocence" maybe very beautiful, but
it is a perilous possession, and Eve should have the knowledge of good
and of evil ere she wanders forth from the paradise of a mother's love.
When a word is never spoken to a girl that is not a caress; when
necessary rebuke comes in tone of tenderest reproach; when "You have
grieved me" has been the heaviest penalty for a youthful fault; when no
anxiety has ever been allowed to trouble the young heart--then, when the
hothouse flower is transplanted, and rough winds blow on it, it droops
and fades.

The spring and summer of 1867 passed over with little of incident, save
one. We quitted Harrow, and the wrench was great. My brother had left
school, and had gone to Cambridge; the master, who had lived with us for
so long, had married and had gone to a house of his own; my mother
thought that as she was growing older, the burden of management was
becoming too heavy, and she desired to seek an easier life. She had saved
money enough to pay for my brother's college career, and she determined
to invest the rest of her savings i