eless acquisition of facts, the
solving of mathematical problems, or conning of parts of speech.
Beside her was always an open book, it might be a passage of
Scripture, a scene from Shakespeare, a poem or paragraph rich in the
wisdom and beauty of some great mind; and as she sewed she dwelt upon
it, repeating it to herself until she was word-perfect in it, then
making it even more her own by earnest contemplation. These passages
became the texts of many observations; and in them was also the light
which showed her life as it is, and as it should be lived. In
meditating upon them she taught herself to meditate; and in following
up the clues they gave her in the endeavour to discriminate and to
judge fairly, by slow degrees she acquired the precious habit of clear
thought. This lifted her at once above herself as she had been; and
what she had lost of insight and spiritual perception since her
marriage, she began to recover in another and more perfect form.
Wholesome consideration of the realities of life now took the place of
fanciful dreams. Her mind, wonderfully fertilised, teemed again--not
with vain imaginings, however, as heretofore, but with something more
substantial. Purposeful thought was where the mere froth of sensuous
seeing had been; and it was thought that now clamoured for expression
instead of the verses and stories--fireworks of the brain, pleasant,
transient, futile distractions with nothing more nourishing in them
than the interest and entertainment of the moment--which had occupied
her chiefly from of old. It was natural to Beth to be open, to discuss
all that concerned herself with her friends; but having no one to talk
to now, she began on a sudden to record her thoughts and impressions
in writing; and having once begun, she entered upon a new phase of
existence altogether. She had discovered a recreation which was more
absorbing than anything she had ever tried before; for her early
scribbling had been of another kind, not nearly so entrancing. Then it
had been the idle gossip of life, and the mere pictorial art of
word-painting, an ingenious exercise, that had occupied her; now it
was the more soul-stirring themes in the region of philosophy and
ethics which she pursued, and scenes and phases of life interested her
only as the raw material from which a goodly moral might be extracted.
Art for art's sake she despised, but in art for man's sake she already
discovered noble possibilities. But her very