Ida is a good, noble woman, of a strength and independence perfectly incomprehensible to me. I can desire, but I cannot do; I am weak and irresolute. People can talk me round, and do anything with me, and I cannot help myself. Another thing makes me unhappy. Ida refused to be confirmed when I was, because, she said, confirmation was only a sham; that the girls were just as wholly worldly after as before, and that it did no earthly good. Well, you see, I was confirmed; and, oh dear me! I was sincere, God knows. I wanted to be good--to live a higher, purer, nobler life than I have lived; and yet, after all, it is I, the child of the Church, that am living a life of folly, and show, and self-indulgence; and it is Ida, who doubts the Church, that is living a life of industry, and energy, and self-denial. Why is it? The world that we promise to renounce, that our sponsors promised that we should renounce--what is it, and where is it? Do those vows mean anything? if so, what? I mean to do all that I ought to; but how to know what? There's Aunt Maria, my god-mother, she did the renouncing for me at my baptism, and promised solemnly that I should abjure "the vain pomp and glory of the world, with all covetous desires of the same; that I should not follow, or be led by them;" yet she has never, that I can see, had one thought of anything else but how to secure to me just exactly those very things. That I should be first in society, be admired, followed, flattered, and make a rich, splendid marriage, has been her very heart's desire and prayer; and if I _should_ renounce the vain pomp and glory of the world, really and truly, she would be utterly heart-broken. So would mamma. I don't mean to lay all the blame on them, either. _I_ have been worldly, too, and ambitious, and wanted to shine, and been only too willing to fall in with all their views. But it really is hard for a person like me to stand alone, against my own heart, and all my relatives, particularly when I don't know exactly, in each case, what to do, and what not; where to begin to resist, and where to yield. Ida says that it is a sin to spend nights in dancing, so that one has to lie in bed like an invalid all the next day. She says it is a sin to run down one's health for no good purpose; and yet we girls all do it--everybody does it. We all go from party to party, from concert to ball, and from ball to something else. We dance the German three or four nights a week; and then, when Sunday comes, sometimes I find that there is the Holy Communion--and then I am afraid to go. I am like the man that had not on the wedding garment.