“A triumph as to life!” she records in her diary. “Last Monday told Mummy of my not going to the Opera without telling her, but proclaimed my intention in the future. No interdiction. So I talked a little about it to make all my ground sure, and coming back on Tuesday found them going to Macbeth, Friday, and yesterday told Mummy as a matter of course. She acquiesced if not consented, and was glad we had so nice a party and hoped I shall not go often, so entirely removing all interdiction....
Well, as to the Theatre! I believe I must confess myself disappointed. Charles Kean as Macbeth did not satisfy me. Mrs. C. Kean very good (I suppose) as Lady Macbeth. Yet not real, as Shakespeare surely should be. After the murder of Duncan was perhaps the grandest, most awful, most real.... The scene where Macduff learns his loss more real than most. The fighting at the end ludicrous.... I thought there would be decent fencing.”
A few months later she went (with Miss Wodehouse) to a ritualistic church, and was moved to hot indignation.
“How can this man wear a priestly robe in the Church, and subscribe to her 6th and 20th most scriptural articles? Well, indeed, might we pray for the state of the Church Militant, when within her walls are such teachers.
Yet was I right in not staying the sacrament because this sermon so stirred my indignation? ‘The unworthiness of ministers hinders not the effect of the Sacrament.’ Perhaps I was wrong. Yet I could not have stayed in a peaceful or holy mind.
To the law and to the testimony! How precious is such unanswerable decree!—so final a court of appeal!”
A note is inserted in the margin,—(“This May 1859. Sic transit! Feb. 11, 1865!”[1865!”]).
Meanwhile her certificate examination was drawing near, and mathematics absorbed most of her thoughts. On July 1st she writes:
“Certificate examination nearly 4 hours. Out of 23 problems did 20½. So I trust I am pretty safe. I did get rather frightened as the time drew on, but really have worked hard and I trust won. Sent a telegram, ‘Success’ to Mother, though the declaration is not yet made.
July 28th. My certificate won triumphantly and marked, ‘with great credit’.”