In the first place all he talks about is his fancied disease.He gets book after book from the office and studies and ponders his case till he grows quite yellow.One day he says he has found out the seat of his disease to be the liver, and changes his diet to meet that view of the case.Martha has to do him up in mustard, and he takes kindly to blue pills.In a day or two he finds his liver is all right, but that his brain is all wrong.The mustard goes now to the back of his neck, and he takes solemn leave of us all, with the assurance that his last hour has come.Finding that he survives the night, however, he transfers the seat of his disease to the heart, spends hours in counting his pulse, refuses to take exercise lest he should bring on palpitations, and warns us all to prepare to follow him.Everybody who comes in has to hear the whole story, every one prescribes something, and he tries each remedy in turn.These all failing to reach his case, he is s plunged into ten-fold gloom.He complains that God has cast him off forever, and that his sins are like the sands of the sea for number.I am such a goose that I listen to all these varying moods and symptoms with the solemn conviction that he is going to die immediately; I bathe his head, and count his pulse, and fan him, and take down his dying depositions for Ernest's solace after he has gone.And I talk theology to him by the hour, while Martha bakes and brews in the kitchen, or makes mince pies, after eating which one might give him the whole Bible at one dose, without the smallest effect.
To-day I stood by his chair, holding his head and whispering such consoling passages as I thought might comfort him, when James burst in, singing and tossing his cap in the air.
"Come here, young man, and hear my last testimony.I am about to die.
The end draws near," were the sepulchral words that made him bring his song to an abrupt close.
"I shall take it very ill of you, sir," quoth James, "if you go and die before giving me that cane you promised me."Who could die decently under such circumstances? The poor old man revived immediately, but looked a good deal injured.After James had gone out, he said:
"It is very painful to one who stands on the very verge of the eternal world to see the young so thoughtless.""But James is not thoughtless," I said."It is only his merry way.""Daughter Katherine," he went on, "you are very kind to the old man, and you will have your reward.But I wish I could feel sure of your state before God.I greatly fear you deceive yourself, and that the ground of your hope is delusive."I felt the blood rush to my face.At first I was staggered a good deal.But is a mortal man who cannot judge of his own state to decide mine? It is true he sees my faults; anybody can, who looks.But he does not see my prayers, or my tears of shame and sorrow; he does not know how many hasty words I repress; how earnestly I am aiming, all the day long, to do right in all the little details of life.He does not know that it costs my fastidious nature an appeal to God every time I kiss his poor old face, and that what would be an act of worship in him is an act of self-denial in me.How should he? The Christian life is a hidden known only by the eye that seeth in secret.And I do believe this life is mine.
Up to this time I have contrived to get along without calling Ernest's father by any name.I mean now to make myself turn over a new leaf.
DECEMBER 7.-James is my perpetual joy and pride.We read and sing together, just as we used to do in our old school days.Martha sits by, with her work, grimly approving; for is he not a man? And, as if my cup of felicity were not full enough, I am to have my dear old pastor come here to settle over this church, and I shall once more hear his beloved voice in the pulpit.Ernest has managed the whole thing.He says the state of Dr.C.'s health makes the change quite necessary, and that he can avail himself of the best surgical advice this city affords, in case his old difficulties recur.I rejoice for myself and for this church, but mother will miss him sadly.
I am leading a very busy, happy life, only I am, perhaps, working a little too hard.What with my scholars, the extra amount of housework Martha contrives to get out of me, the practicing I must keep up if Iam to teach, and the many steps I have to take, I have not only no idle moments, but none too many for recreation.Ernest is so busy himself that he fortunately does not see what a race I am running.
JANUARY 16, 1838.-The first anniversary of our wedding-day, and like all days, has had its lights and its shades.I thought I would celebrate it in such a way as to give pleasure to everybody, and spent a good deal of time in getting up a little gift for each, from Ernest and myself.And I took special pains to have a good dinner, particularly for father.Yes, I had made up my mind to call him by that sacred name for the first time to-day, cost what it may.But he shut himself up in his room directly after breakfast, and when dinner was ready refused to come down.This cast a gloom over us all Then Martha was nearly distracted because a valuable dish had been broken in the kitchen, and could not recover her equanimity at all.Worst of all Ernest, who is not in the least sentimental, never said a word about our wedding-day, and.didn't give me a thing! I have kept hoping all day that he would make me some little present, no matter how small, but now it is too late; he has gone out to be gone all night, probably, and thus ends the day, an utter failure.
I feel a good deal disappointed.Besides, when I look back over this my first year of married life, I do not feel satisfied with myself at all.I can't help feeling that I have been selfish and unreasonable towards Ernest in a great many ways, and as contrary towards Martha as if I enjoyed a state of warfare between us.And I have felt a good deal of secret contempt for her father, with his moods and tenses, his pill-boxes and his plasters, his feastings and his fastings.I do not understand how a Christian can make such slow progress as I do, and how old faults can hang on so.
