phim!);
By all of Him we have in thee;--
Leave nothing of myself in me.
Let me so read thy life, that I
Unto all life of mine may die.

SOME SELECTED PASSAGES

* _The translations in the following pages are mainly those of Woodhead
and Lewis_.

TERESA ON HERSELF

I had a father and a mother who both feared God. My father had his chief
delight in the reading of good books, and he did his best to give his
children the same happy taste. This also helped me much, that I never
saw my father or my mother regard anything but goodness. Though
possessing very great beauty in her youth, my mother was never known to
set any store by it. Her apparel, even in her early married life, was
that of a woman no longer young. Her life was a life of suffering, her
death was most Christian. After my mother's removal, I began to think
too much about my dress and my appearance, and I pursued many such like
things that I was never properly warned against, full of mischief though
they were both to myself and to others. I too early learned every evil
from an immoral relative. I was very fond of this woman's company. I
gossiped and talked with her continually. She assisted me to all the
amusements I loved; and, what was worse, she found some very evil
amusements for me, and in every way communicated to me her own vanities
and mischiefs. I am amazed to think on the evil that one bad companion
can do; nor could I have believed it, unless I had known it by
experience. The company and the conversation of this one woman so
changed me that scarcely any trace was left in me of my natural
disposition to virtue. I became a perfect reflection of her and of
another who was as bad as she was.

For my education and protection my father sent me to the Augustinian
Monastery, in which children like myself were brought up. There was a
good woman in that religious house, and I began gradually to love her.
How impressively she used to speak to me of God! She was a woman of the
greatest good sense and sanctity. She told me how she first came to
herself by the mere reading of these words of the Gospel, 'Many are
called and few chosen.' This good companionship began to root out the
bad habits I had brought to that house with me; but my heart had by that
time become so hard that I never shed a tear, no, not though I read the
whole Passion through. When at last I entered the Religious House of the
Incarnation for life,