ome qualities that make me very miserable, some
feelings that you can have no participation in--that few, very few,
people in the world can at all understand. I don't pride myself on these
peculiarities. I strive to conceal and suppress them as much as I can;
but they burst out sometimes, and then those who see the explosion
despise me, and I hate myself for days afterwards . . . I have just
received your epistle and what accompanied it. I can't tell what should
induce you and your sisters to waste your kindness on such a one as me.
I'm obliged to them, and I hope you'll tell them so. I'm obliged to you
also, more for your note than for your present. The first gave me
pleasure, the last something like pain."

* * * * *

The nervous disturbance, which is stated to have troubled her while she
was at Miss W---'s, seems to have begun to distress her about this time;
at least, she herself speaks of her irritable condition, which was
certainly only a temporary ailment.

"You have been very kind to me of late, and have spared me all those
little sallies of ridicule, which, owing to my miserable and wretched
touchiness of character, used formerly to make me wince, as if I had been
touched with a hot iron; things that nobody else cares for, enter into my
mind and rankle there like venom. I know these feelings are absurd, and
therefore I try to hide them, but they only sting the deeper for
concealment."

Compare this state of mind with the gentle resignation with which she had
submitted to be put aside as useless, or told of her ugliness by her
school-fellows, only three years before.

"My life since I saw you has passed as monotonously and unbroken as ever;
nothing but teach, teach, teach, from morning till night. The greatest
variety I ever have is afforded by a letter from you, or by meeting with
a pleasant new book. The 'Life of Oberlin,' and 'Leigh Richmond's
Domestic Portraiture,' are the last of this description. The latter work
strongly attracted and strangely fascinated my attention. Beg, borrow,
or steal it without delay; and read the 'Memoir of Wilberforce,'--that
short record of a brief uneventful life; I shall never forget it; it is
beautiful, not on account of the language in which it is written, not on
account of the incidents it details, but because of the simple narrative
it gives of a young talented sincere Christian."

* * * * *

About this time Miss W--- removed her school from the fine, open