Page:The Life and Letters of Emily Dickinson (1924).pdf/126

94 most just, loyal and reserved souls that ever avoided cant or religious over-expression. He became a member of the village church rather late in life, having served its parish in almost all capacities. His confession of faith was a simply expressed desire "to be a better man," that was touching in the extreme to those who heard his clear and crisp statement at the evening meeting of his friends and neighbors. He was a man of sterling purity against whom no one ever had taken up a reproach, a friend of the entire community, a notable figure of the County Bar: fulfilling nobly his ideal, expressed in a letter to his wife dated March 19, 1828, a few weeks before their marriage. "Let us prepare for a life of rational happiness. I do not expect or wish for a life of pleasure! May we be happy and useful and successful, and each be an ornament in society and gain the respect and confidence of all with whom we may be connected."

Emily, of course, attended church with her family and heard the long sermons of her day on "foreordination—whereby"—etc. The incident of her dear friend and parson, Dr. Dwight, attempting to convert her, remains as a cherished family annal, for she could never be brought to consider God as an enemy, or herself as hateful in his