I was taught that I should speak the truth, say my prayers, and consider other people; it was a wholesome, right-minded, invigorating training that we had, born of tenderness, educated conscience, and good sense, and I have lived to bless it in many troubled years. What if we did lend a little too much romance now and then to our religious "experience"? It was better for us than some other kinds of romance to which we were quite as liable. What if I did "join the church" (entirely of my own urgent will, not of my father's preference or guiding) at the age of twelve, when the great dogmas to which I was expected to subscribe could not possibly have any rational meaning for me? I remember how my father took me apart, and gently explained to me beforehand the clauses of the rather simple and truly beautiful chapel creed which he himself, I believe, had written to modernize and clarify the old one--I wonder if it were done at that very time? And I remember that it all seemed to me very easy and happy--signifying chiefly, that one meant to be a good girl, if possible. What if one did conduct a voluminous religious correspondence with the other Professor's daughter, who put notes under the fence which divided our homes? We were none the worse girls for that. And we outgrew it, when the time came. [Illustration: PROFESSOR M. STUART PHELPS, ELDEST SON OF PROFESSOR AUSTIN PHELPS, AND BROTHER OF ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS. Professor M. Stuart Phelps died in 1883, at the age of 34. He was professor of philosophy in Smith College, was called by those entitled to judge, the most promising young psychologist in this country, and a brilliant future was prophesied for him. The above portrait is from a photograph by Pach Brothers, New York.] One thing, supremely, I may say that I learned from the Andover life, or, at least, from the Andover home. That was an everlasting scorn of worldliness--I do not mean in the religious sense of the word. That tendency to seek the lower motive, to do the secondary thing, to confuse sounds or appearances with values, which is covered by the word as we commonly use it, very early came to seem to me a way of looking at life for which I know no other term than underbred. There is no better training for a young person than to live in the atmosphere of a study--we did not call it a library, in my father's home. People of leisure who read might have libraries. People who worked among their books had studies. The life of a student, with its gracious peace, its beauty, its dignity, seemed to me, as the life of social preoccupation or success may seem to children born to that penumbra, the inevitable thing.