“As to my contumacy (it’s really that and not the heresy!), W. and G. to be consulted. I said how I wished him to do only what he thought right,—yet believing they would be wise to have me(!) I think he surely _wishes_ it, and, as I should guess he would find his consultees not otherwise inclined, a very small push would decide him that way. (Stories,—‘The fool hath said in his heart,’ etc. Old sexton loq. ‘I can’t but think, sir, there is a God after all’).” “Dec. 4th. Came to Rugby last night. The music in chapel again and again bringing me well-nigh to tears,—so weak and thin is one worn. (Yet should surely notice the good Miss Garrett’s medicine does me— taken about a fortnight now.)... And how the conviction came (when first this Manchester scheme) ‘Yes,— “be thou but fit for the wall, and thou shalt not be left in the way.” It _is_ true!... Is Minnie far wrong in her ‘Men have the best of it’? Easiest,—yes!— Fancy the pleasure of going through School,—College,—returning hallmarked, for good happy well-paid work here. Yet is the easiest ‘Best’? Must there not be pioneers?—can their work be easy? Yet is there not (in many tongues and roads) a ‘noble army of martyrs’? Shall we like Erasmus ‘not aspire to that honour’? But, oh, dear, when the heart’s light and brain clear and life sunny, it’s easy to ‘scorn delights’ (having plenty of the reallest) but when the ‘laborious days’ fail and only weary and dim ones remain—when the tunnel narrows and darkens, and nearly all the light and strength seems to have leaked out— Then—? ‘My Grace is sufficient for thee’. No other help,—‘none other fighteth for us’—and what need?—‘Only _Thou_, O God.’” How little her friends could guess the attitude of her mind may be gathered from the entry that follows: “Dec. 5th. M.’s and my mutual objection to family prayers evidenced by staying out tonight. Justified? I say, prayer continual and interjectional rather than formal and obligatory. But follow out logically? Public worship, etc.” Meanwhile she was hard at work, drawing up schemes for the proposed College, visiting schools and colleges for men, and striving to fit herself for the new work. Mr. Morse must have felt that Mr. Plumptre had recommended a worker of remarkable talents, fine sincerity and most unusual enthusiasm, one whose knowledge of life and of the world was far in advance of what might have been expected from her years. Such qualities have to be paid for, of course. Nature has a rather staggering way of throwing in counterbalancing asperities, and, when S. J.-B. proposed to foster a religious spirit in the college without the formality of daily prayers, he must have begun to realize the inflexibility of the person he was dealing with. He would probably have sympathized with the dictum of Cousin Ellie,—“I would do anything for you if I could only make even a slight alteration”!