the same whenever we could be resolute enough. It required both
nerve and will to do this at five o'clock on a zero morning, in a room
without a fire; but it helped us to harden ourselves, while we formed a
good habit. The working-day in winter began at the very earliest
daylight, and ended at half-past seven in the evening.

Another habit of hers was to keep always beside her at her daily work
something to study or to think about. At first it was "Watts on the
Improvement of the Mind," arranged as a textbook, with questions and
answers, by the minister of Beverly who had made the thought of the
millennium such a reality to his people. She quite wore this book out,
carrying it about with her in her working-dress pocket. After that,
"Locke on the Understanding" was used in the same way. She must have
known both books through and through by heart. Then she read Combe and
Abercrombie, and discussed their physics and metaphysics with our girl
boarders, some of whom had remarkably acute and well-balanced minds.
Her own seemed to have turned from its early bent toward the romantic,
her taste being now for serious and practical, though sometimes
abstruse, themes. I remember that Young and Pollock were her favorite
poets.

I could not keep up with her in her studies and readings, for many of
the books she liked seemed to me very dry. I did not easily take to the
argumentative or moralizing method, which I came to regard as a proof
of the weakness of my own intellect in comparison with hers. I would
gladly have kept pace with her if I could. Anything under the heading
of "Didactick," like some of the pieces in the old "English Reader,"
used by school-children in the generation just before ours, always
repelled me. But I though it necessary to discipline myself by reading
such pieces, and my first attempt at prose composition, "On
Friendship," was stiffly modeled after a certain "Didactick Essay" in
that same English Reader.

My sister, however, cared more to watch the natural development of our
minds than to make us follow the direction of hers. She was really our
teacher, although she never assumed that position. Certainly I learned
more from her about my own capabilities, and how I might put them to
use, than I could have done at any school we knew of, had it been
possible for me to attend one.

I think she was determined that we should not be mentally defrauded by
the circumstances which had made it necessary for us to