some cases, though I confess that it would not be in mine.
But prayer is; and I find a form of prayer necessary. At the same time
I have such an irritable taste, that there are very few forms of
devotion that give me much help but the Prayer-Book collects and
Jeremy Taylor. I do not know if you may find it useful to hear that in
this struggle I sometimes find prayers more useful, if they are not
too much to the sore point. A prayer about ill-temper might tend to
make me cross, when the effort to join my spirit with the
temptation-tried souls of all ages in a solemn prayer for the Church
Universal would lift me out of the petty sphere of personal vexations,
better than going into my grievances even piously. I speak merely of
myself, mind."

"Thank you," I said. "But about what I said about hating. Aunt Isobel,
did you ever change your feelings by force? Do you suppose anybody
ever did?"

"I believe it is a great mistake to trouble one's self with the
spiritual experiences of other people when one cannot fully know their
circumstances, so I won't suppose at all. As to what I am sure of,
Isobel, you know I speak the truth."

"Yes," said I; it would have been impertinence to say more.

"_I_ have found that if one fights for good behaviour, GOD
makes one a present of the good feelings. I believe you will find it
so. Even when you were a child, if you had tried to be good, and had
managed to control yourself, and had not thrown the hatchet, I am
quite sure you would not have hated Philip for long. Perhaps you would
have thought how much better Philip used to behave before your father
and mother died, and a little elder-sisterly, motherly feeling would
have mixed with your wrath at seeing him with his fat legs planted
apart, and his shoulders up, the very picture of wilful naughtiness.
Perhaps you might have thought you had repulsed him a little harshly
when he wanted to help, as you were his chief playmate and twin
sister."

"Please don't," said I. "How I wish I had! Indeed I don't know how I
can ever speak of hating one of the others when there are so few of
us, and we are orphans. But everybody isn't one's brother. And--oh,
Aunt Isobel, at the time one does get so wild, and hard, and twisted
in one's heart!"

"I don't think it is possible to overrate the hardness of the first
close struggle with any natural passion," said my aunt earnestly; "but
indeed the easiness of after-steps is often quite beyond one's
expect