Mattie's year in the convent is of all things the one needful. She rests and learns. At the end of the year she knows what St. Catherine de Sienna had to teach, and her strength is no worse from the acquisition. But as for any influence upon her mind or heart by this year's experience, we seek in vain for a trace. It may be that the beliefs she took behind the convent walls were made firmer to resist soft influences; or it may be that her faith was so impregnable at the beginning of this gentle eclipse, that it had nothing to fear.
The girl of seventeen bade farewell to St. Catherine's with the warm affection of the girl, and the serene self-poise of the woman. It left her just where it had found her, except that she knew a little more about the light graces of learning, and—the main thing, after all,—that she was now able to go on with serious study. It is often the case, when a Protestant so young as Mattie, graduates from the convent, that she carries through life a little cloistered chamber in her heart, where thoughts slip in the quiet hour to count their beads, and whisper "Ave Maria".
The next year Mattie returned to Daughters' College, where she graduated with honors, in 1865. There is an old gray-mottled composition-book written through in different inks, the prevailing color suggesting iron-rust, the pages showing the shadows of half a century, and the oft-repeated contact of a school-girl's hand. We find on the title page, "Miss Mattie Forbes Myers," written by her own hand—that was when she was thirteen. Later—for this book was used during her college days—we find "Mattie F. Myers"—no use now, for her to prefix the "Miss;" that is done by others.
This book is filled with notes taken at lectures, with poems, some original and some copied or memorized, with essays, with school notes; and here alone, save in a few essays on separate sheets, are we given a glimpse into the girl's mind, by the girl herself. Here we may find what she thought of life and death and immortality—but nothing of her daily life.
The book is interesting because of its omissions. There are no straggling lines such as one naturally writes in one's school-days when it is raining, for instance; or when one feels dull or impatient for the closing hour. There are no pyramids of schoolmates' names, no idle pictures that might be faces or geometrical figures, no allusions to Harrodsburg, or Lancaster, or Stanford, or any place or person more concrete than Moses crossing the Red Sea, or Hannibal crossing the Alps. Above all, in whatever disquisition upon the "Atonement" or "The Johnsonian Era," there is no flash of humor. One cannot avoid the impression in turning over these 209 closely written pages that here was a girl who, from year to year—that is, from twelve to twenty,—was serious, was intent upon a definite plan, was adhering closely to a central theme, unmindful of aught that detracts or turns the mind aside, though that digression be but the pleasant recreation of a smile.
It is true that all these pages do not present "solid reading matter." There is poetry here which shows a deeper love of poetry than of a poetic gift. One sees that this love of poetry was no superficial acquirement; it was not that nice taste for forms that contents the modern reader of magazines with a four-line stanza about any subject that can be put into four lines. Mattie read Mrs. Browning because she loved her. Of all books in English literature, she seems to have cared most for "Aurora Leigh." We find her in after years advising her friends to read Mrs. Browning, if they would taste the purest literary joys. A serious business, indeed, was life to that great-souled English poet with the slender hand up-propping the heavy head—this life so full of song and gaiety to most of us, before we stop laughing—also it meant serious business to Mattie Myers. And as Elizabeth Barrett found in later years a great love upon which she could always rest her weary heart, even so was Mattie Myers to find a love resourceful and deathless? We shall see, by-and-by.
The first writing in the book—written somewhere in her thirteenth year, is this: "A forehead royal with the truth"—Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Then we find, "As stars differ from one another in glory, so shall it be in the resurrection morn." Later comes, "Heaven is fair, earth pitiless; why is life so dear?" And, "He who has most of heart has most of sword." Then, "Oh life, is all thy song, Endure and die?" These are interesting as showing what sort of sentiments interested the little girl at the boarding-school. They are all like these, her written selections, grave to solemnity. Her original poetry is like it:
"In this narrow vale of life
Amid its scoldings and its strife,
Amid its darkness and its gloom,
Loving children, welcome, come."
Nor was this that seriousness which many an author confines to his writings, living a life far different from one's tragic numbers. Mattie was not an author, she had no desire to be one, and what she wrote was not apart from her life, but a part of it.
The style she developed was the oratorical. Her sentences were balanced, and her thoughts enforced by repetition. What she wrote after her graduation was, in the main, written to be delivered in public address. Her college theses represent the highest development of her style. Even as one reads them, he feels that they should be proclaimed. They are suited to the public platform. If the girl who wrote these does not, in time, become a popular lecturer, we shall be much mistaken! Moreover, apart from the embellishment which she loved to give her sentences, we find that whatever subject she undertakes, she treats with a whole-souled enthusiasm, as if it were a matter of immediate, vital importance, and as if she were an eyewitness of the event. Hear her: