Stepping Heavenward | Page 5

looked at my desk, which contained exactly what I
wanted, plenty of paper, seals, wax and pens. I always use wax. Wafers
are vulgar. Then I opened the Bible at random, and lighted on these
words:
"Watch, therefore, for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come."
There was nothing very cheering in that. I felt a real repugnance to be
always on the watch, thinking I might die at any moment. I am sure I
am not fit to die. Besides I want to have a good time, with nothing to
worry me. I hope I shall live ever so long. Perhaps in the course of forty
or fifty years I may get tired of this world and want to leave it. And I
hope by that time I shall be a great deal better than I am now, and fit to
go to heaven.
I wrote a note to mother on my new desk, and thanked her for it I told
her she was the best mother in the world, and that I was the worst
daughter. When it was done I did not like it, and so I wrote another.
Then I went down to dinner and felt better. We had such a nice dinner!

Everything I liked best was on the table. Mother had not forgotten one
of all the dainties I like. Amelia was there too. Mother had invited her
to give me a little surprise. It is bedtime now, and I must say my
prayers and go to bed. I have got all chilled through, writing here in the
cold. I believe I will say my prayers in bed, just for this once. I do not
feel sleepy, but I am sure I ought not to sit up another moment.
JAN. 30. -Here I am at my desk once more. There is a fire in my room,
and mother is sitting by it, reading. I can't see what book it is, but I
have no doubt it is Thomas A Kempis. How she can go on reading it so
year after year, I cannot imagine. For my part I like something new.
But I must go back to where I left off.
That night when I stopped writing, I hurried to bed as fast as I could,
for I felt cold and tired. I remember saying, "Oh, God, I am ashamed to
pray," and then I began to think of all the things that had happened that
day, and never knew another thing till the rising bell rang and I found it
was morning. I am sure I did not mean to go to sleep. I think now it
was wrong for me to be such a coward as to try to say my prayers in
bed because of the cold. While I was writing I did not once think how I
felt. Well, I jumped up as soon as I heard the bell, but found I had a
dreadful pain in my side, and a cough. Susan says I coughed all night. I
remembered then that I had just such a cough and just such a pain the
last time I walked in the snow without overshoes. I crept back to bed
feeling about as mean as I could. Mother sent up to know why I did not
come down, and I had to own that I was sick. She came up directly
looking so anxious! And here I have been shut up ever since; only to
day I am sitting up a little. Poor mother has had trouble enough with
me; I know I have been cross and unreasonable, and it was all my own
fault that I was ill. Another time I will do as mother says.
JAN. 31. -How easy it is to make good resolutions, and how easy it is
to break them! Just as I had got so far, yesterday, mother spoke for the
third time about my exerting myself so much. And just at that moment I
fainted away, and she had a great time all alone there with me. I did not
realize how long I had been writing, nor how weak I was. I do wonder
if I shall ever really learn that mother knows more than I do!

Feb. 17. -It is more than a month since I took that cold, and here I still
am, shut up in the house. To be sure the doctor lets me go down stairs,
but then he won't listen to a word about school. Oh, dear! All the girls
will get ahead of me.
This is Sunday, and everybody has gone to church. I thought I ought to
make a good use of the time while they were gone, so I took the
Memoir of Henry Martyn, and