The foster-sisters

by Lucy Ellen Guernsey

While we were driving home, Mrs. Thorpe told us something of poor Nan's history. She had fallen in with a young man in the neighborhood, a suitable match enough for all that at first appeared; but by what seemed an accident, Mrs. Davis discovered beyond all doubt that the man in question was a drunkard, a gambler, and an utterly worthless wretch. All this decided Mrs. Davis that the match must be broken at once.

But Nan, on the news being opened to her, absolutely refused to believe the accusations against her lover, till he proved the truth of them beyond question, by going off with the pretty giddy wife of a laborer on his father's farm. The news threw poor Anne into a fit of something like frenzy, which passed into the sullen melancholy that Mrs. Davis had described. She often refused food for days together, nor would she speak to her mother, whom she blamed with the wilfulness of partial insanity for all that had happened.

"And I am sure 'tis no wonder my poor cousin Davis should like the Methodists, since they have given her back her daughter!" said Mrs. Thorpe. "I have heard that the preachers made people crazy, but this does not seem like it." *

* Mr. Wesley seems to have had a strange power over the insane. See several accounts in his wonderful journal.

The next morning we were in church betimes, for from what she had heard, Mrs. Thorpe said she had no doubt there would be a great crowd, since the fame of the Friday lecture had gone abroad, and the matter was much talked about.

So it proved. People kept coming and coming, till every seat of the church was occupied and many persons stood in the aisles, and passage-ways. Lady Throckmorton was in her pew in the chancel, with a bevy of smartly dressed ladies and gentlemen, nodding, passing snuff-boxes, whispering and curtsying to friends all over the church, as freely as in a theatre. The free seats were filled with poor folks and some gentry as well. I thought Lady Throckmorton was trying to make Mr. Cheriton look at her, but if so, she did not succeed, for he never turned his eyes towards her, more than if she were not present.

As the service went on, a hush gradually fell upon the congregation. Voice after voice chimed in with the responses, and there was a truce to the whispering and nodding among the fine folks; only Lady Throckmorton and two or three of those about her, kept it up after the sermon began, but even with them, there was a hush as the text was announced.

"God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life."

I cannot pretend to analyze the sermon. I only know that it seemed to bring me just what I wanted.

Ever since I could think at all, I had felt a certain void in my heart which nothing seemed to supply. I had learned to fear the Father, as I said, as some far off Ruler, in whose hands I was a helpless, useless atom, and the Son, as my stern inexorable Judge; but I had never thought of loving them. All my love was for the Holy Virgin and the Saints. But no creature however exalted can satisfy the cravings of an awakened nature. I felt myself blindly groping in the dark, as it were, for some hand to lead me; some help to support me. I was haunted by the dread of death, and what should come after it—of that tremendous spectre of purgatory which the Roman church hath set up, to haunt the death-beds—not so much of impenitent as of penitent sinners. I longed to be good; but I found that when I would do good, evil was present with me.