Cape Cod Folks | Page 3

to Wallencamp under circumstances not usual, perhaps, among propagandists; nevertheless, I had been singularly free from misgivings.
A girl of nineteen years, I had a home endowed with every luxury; a circle of family acquaintance, which, I admitted, did me great credit; congenial companions; while as for my education, I was pleased to call it completed. My career at boarding-schools had been of a delightfully varied and elective nature, for I had not deigned to toil with squalid studiousness, or even to sail with politic and inglorious ease through the prescribed course of study at any institution. Any misadventures necessarily following from this course my friends had gilded over with the flattering insinuation that I was "too vivacious" for this sort of discipline, or "too fragile" for that, though I am bound to say that, in such cases, my "vivacity" had generally sealed my fate before the delicacy of my constitution became too alarmingly apparent.
I had, to be sure, a few commendable aspirations, but I had started out fresh so many times with them only to see them meet the same end!
Though not by nature of a self-depreciatory turn of mind, I had occasional flashes of inspiration, to the effect that, in spite of the soft flattery of friends, I really was amounting to very little after all. It was in a mood induced by one of these supernatural gleams that I stood on one occasion, leaning a pair of very plump arms on the graveyard wall, looking wistfully over into the place of tombs, and thinking how nice it would be to have done forever with the fret and turmoil of life! And it was at such a time, too, that I received from a school friend, Mary Waite, the letter which was the moving cause of my mission to Wallencamp.
Mary Waite, by the way, was one of those "prosy, ridiculous girls"--so I had been compelled to classify her, although I was secretly troubled by a sincere admiration of her virtues,--who had made it an absorbing pursuit of her school-days to probe her text-books for useful information, and was also accustomed to defer to her teachers as high authority on matters of daily discipline. She was not in "our set." She was poor, and studious, and obedient, yet a friendship had sprung up between her and me, and I was moved to forgive her the, in many respects, grovelling tendencies of her nature. I even ascended occasionally to her room on the fourth floor to shock her with my sentiments, when there was nothing livelier going on.
She wrote:--
"MY DEAR S----: Are you still perfectly happy, as you used to try to have me think you were always--the old restlessness, the better longings unsatisfied, do they never come up again? [That was Mary's insidious way of stating a difficulty.] Don't you believe you would be happier to do something in real earnest? Something for people outside, I mean. [I flushed a little at that. An insinuation of that sort can't be put too delicately.] I have tried to imagine how the proposal I am going to make will strike you--but never mind. I am teaching, you know, in Kedarville. I leave here, at the close of the term, for another field of labor, and now I want you to apply for the Kedarville school. Yes, it is a remote, poverty-stricken place. It contains no society, no church, no library, not even a little country store! It would seem to you, I dare say, like going back to the half-barbarous conditions of life. The people are simple and kind-hearted; but they need training--oh, how much!--physically, mentally, and morally. I can assure you, here is scope for the most daring missionary enterprise, and you,--I believe that you could do it if you would. Consider the matter seriously; consult with your friends about it, and if you do decide to try the experiment, write as legibly as you possibly can to the Superintendent of Schools, Farmouth, Mass., stating your qualifications, etc."
The idea struck me with such strange and immediate favor that I quite forbore to consult with my friends in regard to it. I resolved to go on the instant, and wrote my friend Mary to that effect, congratulating her, with an undercurrent of mischievous intention, on having been the happy means of setting my powers drifting in the right direction at last; and reproached her gently with having seemed to imply, once, in her letter, some occult reason why I had not been regarded, heretofore as specially designed to work in the cause of missions, whereas I had always felt myself drifting inevitably towards that end.
I wrote to the Superintendent of the Farmouth schools. But here I had an earnest purpose to serve, and a real desire to succeed, and here met with