... Fire was always terrible, so my first aspirations were caused by fear of hell _below_. Before that, I had wanted to laugh when told to pray. As I grew, I thought much of the heavenly state, but could find only vague pictures. Recently I asked a country minister his idea of heaven, and he seemed uncertain. He could only assure me that it was a desirable place. Yet children always wonder about their destination, questioning as they journey. I started early to pray--a grim affair; at first crying out through fear or hurt. God was too awful for such intimacies so I took the Christ figure of the Trinity into my confidence. Just here came a strange transition. It didn't seem sufficient for me to think those prayers: I felt I must state them clearly or my wish might be ambiguous. Even to-day, I find that only expressing a thing simplifies it for me. If there were acquaintances whose lives were touched with beauty or romance, I prayed for them, but mostly named _my_ wants. I made the discovery that the intensity put forth in holding the image of a desire brings it into the world. Man may call the answer _God_, but that seems his own power. I have sometimes thought of Will with its divine kindred, Wisdom and Love, as the Three Who stood first before His Face. To-day we dream, and to-morrow our hands are filled. I remember the early Chapel days when the Old Man would say, "Be careful what you want--you are apt to get it,"--with a great laugh and mystery playing about his words. How truly one comes to realise that. When I started at Stonestudy, the town-people used to ask how we were taught,--if our English and story-structure were principally considered as in the schools. I could only tell them, "Oh, no, not like school!" Then I tried to explain Chapel and they wondered how that manner of education could make us writers. Yet our writing improved with the days. Work, a few weeks old, embarrassed us with its defects. Then I actually tried to discover just how we were being helped. To a young aspirant, there is awe about an artist; we had come to listen. The same thoughts expressed in homely words wouldn't have quickened us. The Old Man's sentences were rich with figures that clarified everything. We began to _see_ Stonestudy. About this time at home I used to start anything that interested me, "I've got a picture----" Chapel had helped me, as only one can help another, by quickening the imagination.