Domestic fiction; New England -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
Under the Christian influence lovingly and judiciously exercised over
them, not even the careless or unimpressionable among the pupils could
remain altogether untouched by some sense of their responsibility to the
Lord Jesus, or to the claims which He had on them to be workers together
with Him in the world which He came to save. Fidelia, with softened
heart and awakened conscience, was now open to that influence, and
yielded to it as she had not done before. There was no neglect or
misappropriation of the "quiet half-hour" morning and evening now, nor
of any other of the many means of grace provided for the benefit of all.
The scope and sense of all the teaching, as to duty, of the noble woman
through whose labours and self-denials the seminary was founded had
been--"Ye are not your own: ye are bought with a price; therefore
glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's."
"No man liveth to himself." One of her last utterances to the pupils
whom she loved and for whom she laboured was this: "There is nothing in
the universe that I fear, but that I shall not know all my duty, or
shall fail to do it." She was dead, but her works and words still lived
and spoke through those who had come after her, and through them there
came richly to Fidelia the blessing which above all other blessings she
desired for herself--the wish and the power to consecrate her life to
the work which is the highest of all. So she came back to her home in a
different state of heart and mind this time--she herself did not know
how different till she was among old familiar friends and circumstances
again, looking over the past and on to the future with other hopes and
aspirations than those which had made her discontented about the time of
her last coming home.
It did not seem quite like home to her in Halsey any more. But she told
herself she would wait patiently and do faithfully the work which came
to her hand, till some opening should come to her of higher work in a
larger field as a teacher, and then she would strive to be such a
teacher as Eunice might have been in her youth, had not other work
fallen to her hand.
By-and-by something happened. A letter came to her from Dr Justin
Everett which surprised her. It was not the first time that he had
written to her. After the death of her sister he had written a letter
of sympathy which she had answered briefly. She had not answered other
letters which had followed, but this one must be answered. It was a
long letter, telling her something of his youth and of his engagement to
her sister, and of the disappointment and pain which their necessary
separation had caused to them both.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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