"But you are begging the question."
"If you will have patience, papa, I will try to tell you how it is. You know the Lord said, 'If any man serve me, let him follow me.' You know how He lived and what He lived for. Should I be following in his footsteps, when I was dressing and dancing and talking nonsense or nothings and getting so tired that I could do nothing but sleep all the next day? And papa, that is not all. It is so difficult, when one is dressed to look well and others are dressed in like manner, or for the same object, I mean, - it is very difficult not to wish to look well, and to wish to look better than other people, and to be glad if one does; and then comes the desire for admiration, and a feeling of pride, and perhaps, emulation of somebody else; and one comes home with one's head filled with poor thoughts, and the next day one is fit for nothing. And is that, following Christ? who went about doing good, who sought not His own, who was separate from sinners. And He said to His people, 'Ye are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.' "
"Why, Daisy," said my father, passing over the last part of my speech, "how do you know all this? Have you been out into the great world already?"
"No, papa; but if the little world has such effects what must the great one do?"
"Pray, what little world have you seen?"
"The little world of West Point, papa. And something of the world of Washington."
"That is not much like a European court," said my father. "How did you like West Point?"
"Very much indeed."
"Did you go to balls there?"
"Oh, no, sir! only little hops, that the cadets have in the evenings."