You know, dear friend, about sister Ida's peculiar course, and how very much it has vexed mamma. Yet, really and truly, I can't help respecting Ida. It seems to me she shows a real strength of principle that I lack. She went into gay society only a little while before she gave it up, and her reasons, I think, were good ones. She said it weakened her health, weakened her mind; that there was no use in it, and that it was just making her physically and morally helpless, and that she wanted to live for a purpose of her own. She wanted to go to Paris, and study for the medical profession; but neither papa, nor mamma, nor any of the family would hear of it. But Ida persisted that she would do something, and finally papa took her into his business, to manage the foreign correspondence, which she does admirably, putting all her knowledge of languages to account. He gives her the salary of a confidential clerk, and she lays it up, with the intention finally of carrying her purpose.
Ida is a good, noble woman, of a strength and independence perfectly incomprehensible to me. I can desire, but I cannot do; I am weak and irresolute. People can talk me round, and do anything with me, and I cannot help myself.
Another thing makes me unhappy. Ida refused to be confirmed when I was, because, she said, confirmation was only a sham; that the girls were just as wholly worldly after as before, and that it did no earthly good.
Well, you see, I was confirmed; and, oh dear me! I was sincere, God knows. I wanted to be good—to live a higher, purer, nobler life than I have lived; and yet, after all, it is I, the child of the Church, that am living a life of folly, and show, and self-indulgence; and it is Ida, who doubts the Church, that is living a life of industry, and energy, and self-denial.
Why is it? The world that we promise to renounce, that our sponsors promised that we should renounce—what is it, and where is it? Do those vows mean anything? if so, what? I mean to do all that I ought to; but how to know what? There's Aunt Maria, my god-mother, she did the renouncing for me at my baptism, and promised solemnly that I should abjure "the vain pomp and glory of the world, with all covetous desires of the same; that I should not follow, or be led by them;" yet she has never, that I can see, had one thought of anything else but how to secure to me just exactly those very things. That I should be first in society, be admired, followed, flattered, and make a rich, splendid marriage, has been her very heart's desire and prayer; and if I should renounce the vain pomp and glory of the world, really and truly, she would be utterly heart-broken. So would mamma.
I don't mean to lay all the blame on them, either. I have been worldly, too, and ambitious, and wanted to shine, and been only too willing to fall in with all their views.
But it really is hard for a person like me to stand alone, against my own heart, and all my relatives, particularly when I don't know exactly, in each case, what to do, and what not; where to begin to resist, and where to yield.
Ida says that it is a sin to spend nights in dancing, so that one has to lie in bed like an invalid all the next day. She says it is a sin to run down one's health for no good purpose; and yet we girls all do it—everybody does it. We all go from party to party, from concert to ball, and from ball to something else. We dance the German three or four nights a week; and then, when Sunday comes, sometimes I find that there is the Holy Communion—and then I am afraid to go. I am like the man that had not on the wedding garment.
It seems to me that our church services were made for real Christians—people like the primitive Christians, who made a real thing of it; they gave up everything and went down and worshiped in the catacombs, for instance. I remember seeing those catacombs where they held their church far down under ground, when I was in Rome. There would be some meaning in such people's using our service, but when I try to go through with it I fear to take such words on my lips. I wonder that nobody seems to feel how awful those words are, and how much they must mean, if they mean anything. It seems to me so solemn to say to God, as we do say in the communion service, "Here we offer and present unto Thee, O, Lord, ourselves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice unto Thee"——
I see so many saying this who never seem to think of it again; and, oh, my dear friend, I have said it myself, and been no better afterward, and now, alas, I too often turn away from the holy ordinance because I feel that it is only a mockery to utter them, living as I do.