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13 would learn how to study, and after a fashion I did. Female education was at a very low ebb in what were called "Ladies' Schools" in those days. "We learned to be ladies, I hope, for we certainly learned very little else. Had it not been for cultivated people about me — had it not been for my dear Reverend Mr. Livermore, I should have had most arid oases in my youthful mind. My parents were both too busy to criticise me; there were younger children, always having the croup and the scarlet-fever. I often sat up all night, not reading Miss Edgeworth, but holding in my arms a poor little struggling brother. Alas! I saw three of them die, and how deeply did I sympathize with my poor mother! Perhaps this ploughshare of agony which went through my girlish heart kept me from being cold, indifferent, merciless, thoughtless. I hope so, but I still believe praises and smiles and a little approbation would have made of me a more amiable character.

My father and mother had followed that wave of Unitarianism which was started by Channing and Martineau, and all my ideas of religion were hopeful, inspiring, and beautiful. I never knew that horror of "a jealous God," which doctrine had been assiduously preached in New England just before I came on the scene, and which had gone far to fill the insane asylums. Indeed, one of my own schoolmates had gone raving in a religious mania under my own eyes. But I can remember the soothing words of Mr. Livermore, who came in as I was holding one little dear, dying brother in my arms — how he took him from me and said, with such hopeful, peaceful assurance, that "death was swallowed up in victory." I never had a doubt. My God has always been a loving God.

I wish I could repay here my indebtness to that