ok at the flower of a morning-glory the evening before the dawn which
is to see it unfold. The delicate petals are twisted into a spiral,
which at the appointed hour, when the sunlight touches the hidden
springs of its life, will uncoil itself and let the day into the chamber
of its virgin heart. But the spiral must unwind by its own law, and the
hand that shall try to hasten the process will only spoil the blossom
which would have expanded in symmetrical beauty under the rosy fingers
of morning.

We may take a hint from Nature's handling of the flower in dealing with
young souls, and especially with the souls of young girls, which, from
their organization and conditions, require more careful treatment than
those of their tougher-fibred brothers. Many parents reproach themselves
for not having enforced their own convictions on their children in the
face of every inborn antagonism they encountered. Let them not be too
severe in their self-condemnation. A want of judgment in this matter
has sent many a young person to Bedlam, whose nature would have opened
kindly enough if it had only been trusted to the sweet influences
of morning sunshine. In such cases it may be that the state we call
insanity is not always an unalloyed evil. It may take the place of
something worse, the wretchedness of a mind not yet dethroned, but
subject to the perpetual interferences of another mind governed by
laws alien and hostile to its own. Insanity may perhaps be the only
palliative left to Nature in this extremity. But before she comes to
that, she has many expedients. The mind does not know what diet it
can feed on until it has been brought to the starvation point. Its
experience is like that of those who have been long drifting about
on rafts or in long-boats. There is nothing out of which it will not
contrive to get some sustenance. A person of note, long held captive for
a political offence, is said to have owed the preservation of his reason
to a pin, out of which he contrived to get exercise and excitement by
throwing it down carelessly on the dark floor of his dungeon, and then
hunting for it in a series of systematic explorations until he had found
it.

Perhaps the most natural thing Myrtle Hazard could have done would have
been to go crazy, and be sent to the nearest asylum, if Providence,
which in its wisdom makes use of the most unexpected agencies, had not
made a special provision for her mental welfare. She was in that arid
ho