ink I have learned in a very strange way to
understand his capacity for sadness. I understand it by my own capacity
for joy. I often smile to think how I used to accuse him of seeing double,
for it is the very thing which Robert says to me again and again when a
sight or a sound gives me such intense pleasure that I can hardly bear it.
And I see that while I have nearly the same sensitiveness to all
impressions from things or from people which he had, my body compels the
impressions to be joyous. This is what I owe mamma. If papa could have
been well and strong, he would have sung joy such as no poet has ever sung
since suns began to shine.

"But most that he wrote was sad; and I am afraid most that he taught the
people was sad too, or, at any rate, not hopeful as it ought to be in this
beautiful, blessed world, which 'God so loved' and loves. So perhaps it
was better for people that papa never preached in any one parish more than
three or four years. Probably God took care to send next a man who would
make everybody take courage again. However, it was very hard for mamma,
and very hard for us; although for us there was excitement and fun in
getting into new houses and getting acquainted with new people; but the
worst thing was that we had very little money, and it used it up so to
move from place to place, and buy new things. I knew all about this before
I was ten years old as well as if I had been forty; and by the time I was
twelve, I was a perfect little miser of both clothes and money--I had such
a horror of the terrible days, which sometimes came, when we sorely wanted
both.

"Early in the spring after I was thirteen--my birthday was in December--we
went to live in a little place called Maynard's Mills. It was a suburban
village near the largest manufacturing town in the State. The other two
homes which I could remember had been very small country villages, where
none of the people were rich, and only a few attended the Episcopal
church. In Maynard's Mills there were many rich people, and almost
everybody went to our church. The whole place was owned by Mr. Maynard,
Robert's father. He had gone out there to live near his mills, and the
place was so beautiful that family after family of the rich mill-owners
had moved out there. At first they used to go into town to church; but it
was a long drive, cold in winter and hot in summer, and so Mr. Maynard
built a beautiful chapel near his house and sent for papa to come