March 29-Yesterday, for the first time since that dreadful blow, I felt some return of my natural gayety and cheerfulness. It seemed to come hand in hand with my first real effort to go so far out of myself as to try to do exactly what would gratify dear mother.
But to-day I am all down again. I miss Amelia's friendship, for one thing. To be sure I wonder how I ever came to love such a superficial character so devotedly, but I must have somebody to love, and perhaps I invented a lovely creature, and called it by her name, and bowed down to it and worshiped it. I certainly did so in regard to him whose heart less cruelty has left me so sad, so desolate.
Evening.-Mother has been very patient and forbearing with me all day.
To-night, after tea, she said, in her gentlest, tenderest way,
"Dear Katy, I feel very sorry for you. But I see one path which you have not yet tried, which can lead you out of these sore straits. You have tried living for yourself a good many years, and the result is great weariness and heaviness of soul. Try now to live for others. Take a class in the Sunday-school. Go with me to visit my poor people. You will be astonished to find how much suffering and sickness there is in this world, and how delightful it is to sympathize with and try to relieve it."
This advice was very repugnant to me. My time is pretty fully occupied with my books, my music and my drawing. And of all places in the world I hate a sick-room. But, on the whole, I will take a class in the Sunday-school.
Chapter 5
V.
APRIL 6.
I have taken it at last. I would not take one before, because I knew I could not teach little children how to love God, unless I loved Him myself. My class is perfectly delightful. There are twelve dear little things in it, of all ages between eight and nine. Eleven are girls, and the one boy makes me more trouble than all of them put together. When I get them all about me, and their sweet innocent faces look up into mine, I am so happy that I can hardly help stopping every now and then to kiss them. They ask the very strangest questions I mean to spend a great deal of time in preparing the lesson, and in hunting up stories to illustrate it. Oh, I am so glad I was ever born into this beautiful world, where there will always be dear little children to love!
APRIL 13.-Sunday has come again, and with it my darling little class! Dr. Cabot has preached delightfully all day, and I feel that I begin to understand his preaching better, and that it must do me good. I long, I truly long to please God; I long to feel as the best Christians feel, and to live as they live.