fficiently modest, she sought to make her
admiring friends aware of the fact, and dwelt with untiring interest on
the trials and triumphs of the time. But she by no means considered her
education completed, she gravely assured Mr Maxwell. She had a plan of
study drawn out by the distinguished principal of the seminary, which,
after she should be quite rested from the work of the last years, she
intended steadily to pursue, to the further development of her powers,
and the acquisition of knowledge which should fit her for usefulness in
any sphere which she might be called to occupy. She had much to say on
these themes, her present self-improvement and her future work and
influence in the world, and Mr Maxwell sometimes smiled in secret as he
listened, but he liked to listen all the same. Her views were not very
clear to herself, nor very practical, but she was very earnest in
expressing them; and being perfectly sincere in her beliefs and honest
in her intentions, she had also perfect confidence in the success of
what she was pleased to call her "life's work," and never doubted that
she should accomplish through her labours find see with her eyes, all
the good which she planned.

It was her earnestness and evident sincerity that charmed Mr Maxwell,
and though all this looked to him sometimes like a child's mimic
assumption of responsibilities and duties, with a child's power of
imagining what is desired, and ignoring all else, yet he was more
impatient of his own doubts than of her illusions.

But dare he speak or think of them as illusions? He recalled his own
early youth--the plans he had formed, the hopes he had cherished of all
he was to dare and do for his Master's sake, the battles he was to win,
the souls he was to conquer, and he grew grave and self-reproachful at
the remembrance. He was young yet as to his work and his office, and
young in years, but in the presence of all his earnestness, this desire
to do good and true work in the world, he could not but acknowledge that
his own early zeal had cooled somewhat, that something had gone from him
in life, and in his discontent with himself his admiration for the
little enthusiast grew apace. And though he could not but smile now and
then, still as she made her modest little allusions to her private diary
and to certain "resolutions" written therein, and though he could not
always respond with sufficient heartiness to satisfy himself when she
showed him lit