liment, and shall certainly
look pleasant all day to-day, if I never did before. Monsieur and the
rest wished me, I won't say how many, good wishes, rushing at me as I
went in to breakfast--and Milly privately informed Lucy that she liked
Miss Payson "a heap" better than she did any body else, and then came
and begged me to buy her! I buy her! Heaven bless the poor little girl.
I had some presents and affectionate notes from different members of the
family and from my scholars--also letters from sister and Ned, which
delighted me infinitely more than I'm going to tell _you_, old journal.
Took tea at Mr. P.'s and Mrs. P. laughed at her husband because he had
once an idea of going to New England to get my little ladyship to wife
(for the sake of my father, of course). Mr. P. blushed like a boy and
fidgeted terribly, but I didn't care a snap--I am not old enough to be
wife to anybody, and I'm not going to mind if people do joke with
me about it. I've had better things to think of on this New Year's
day--good, heavenward thoughts and prayers and hopes, and if I do not
become more and more transformed into the Divine, then are prayers and
hopes things of nought. Oh, how dissatisfied I am with myself. How I
long to be like unto Him into whose image I shall one day be changed
when I see Him as He is!

I believe nobody understands me on religious points, for I can not, and,
it seems to me, _need_ not parade my private feelings before the world.
Cousin G., God bless him! knows enough, and yet my letters to him do not
tell the hundredth part of that which these four walls might tell, if
they would. I do not know that I am not wrong, but I do dislike
the present style of talking on religious subjects. Let people
pray--earnestly, fervently, not simply morning and night, but the _whole
day long_, making their lives one continued prayer; but, oh, don't let
them tell others of, or let others know _half_ how much of communion
with Heaven is known to their own hearts. Is it not true that those who
talk most, go most to meetings, run hither and thither to all sorts of
societies and all sorts of readings--is it not true that such
people would not find peace and contentment--yes, blessedness of
blessedness--in solitary hours when to the Searcher of hearts alone are
known their aspirations and their love? I do not know, I am puzzled; but
I may say here, where nobody will ever see it, what I _do_ think, and I
say it to my own heart as well a