May 21. C---- has gone into the army; but first he has “joined the army of the Lord,” as he expresses it in his letter to his mother. If ever mortals could hear the angels rejoicing “over one that repenteth,” I should think I had heard them to-day, while I read this news. So much anxiety lest here should be a shipwrecked soul, so many have been pained about him, and burdened for him,--so little faith or hope some of us had, as to the possibility of his rising out of his old self into a better life,--all these memories come back, and make it seem like a miracle; and indeed it is the greatest of all miracles. And when he writes, “Aunt Lucy may feel as if her prayers were being answered,” it seems to me as if I had nothing but unbelief to remember. It is the mighty hand of God, if he is saved! He goes into temptation, but he goes hopeful, and longing to prove himself a “good soldier of the Cross.” And now he needs to be followed with faith and prayer more than ever. It seems to me as if this were realizing for the first time, what “conversion” means; that it is a reality, and not a term which custom has made mere cant. He speaks of himself in a free, simple way, as _I_ never could have spoken; and yet it _is_ genuine. Oh, if it might unloose more hearts and tongues! May 23. ... I am so glad to be _needed_, as I seem to be now, by several of my friends: my thoughts, my care, my suggestions seem of some value. It is a woman’s want, and I feel a woman’s gratification in being allowed to think a little for others. For a great school like this, I never feel that I can do much; I want to know just the especial need of somebody that I can help. So human nature goes: absorbed by petty miseries quite as much as by grand and beautiful ideas; who would think, sometimes, that such as we could be immortal beings? I have felt myself growing very skeptical for a little while, of late. A cold thrill creeps insidiously through me when I go among people; there is so little apparent reality in human lives, loves, friendships. “All seek their own;” and when there is a gleam of unselfishness, it is but a passing gleam. And, worst of all, when I am with those whose lives are pitched in a low key, I find myself taking it for granted that it is life.