“You do not know him, you do not know him,” again and again she replied, wearily. She might have added,—but she did not,—“You do not know me.” And after all, what mother, of them all, knows her daughter, enveloped as she is in a double veil? For between the old heart and the young lies the mist of the years; and what eye can pierce aright the diffracting medium of maternal love? Even Doctor Alice, when called in consultation, next day, could not probe to the bottom of the mystery. And are there not ever some little nooks and corners of our hearts unsuspected by our dearest friends, even?—aspirations that they would have laughed at, perhaps,—fears which we should have blushed to confess,—hopes, alas, withered and fallen now,—that we have never revealed to mortal ears? Now, within our Mary’s breast there was, I shall not say a nook or a recess, but a dark and dismal chamber, the key of which had never left her keeping. Let us call it the Cavern of Religious Terror, and cut the allegory short. Suppose we try to put ourselves in her place, and see how things looked, not to an average girl of that period (still less to any one of this), but to one such as Mary was. At the time in question, the dogma of what is known among theologians, I believe, as that of the plenary inspiration of the Scriptures, was held from one end of Virginia to the other. That is to say, my Ah Yung, that every chapter, every sentence, every word, and every syllable of the Bible had been literally inspired, and was absolutely true. This we were expected to believe and did believe; and by what ingenuity we were to escape the dogma of eternal damnation I, for one, cannot see. But we made no effort to escape it, regarding it, to a man, as the mainstay of society and the sheet-anchor of all the virtues. A belief in hell was ranked among the necessaries of life. “’Twas the merest luxury,” quoth Charley. Now, what is the imagination but a kind of inner eye, revealing to us, often with fearful distinctness, that which may be, but is not. And imagination was, as we know, an overshadowing trait of Mary’s mind. And what a training that imagination had! Her mother thought it was her duty, so let that pass; but hardly had she shed her long clothes when her precocious little head began to teem with burning lakes, and writhing souls, and mocking demons, and worms that die not. And, ofttimes, her little heart almost ceased to beat, as she lay in her trundle-bed, and, with wide-staring eyes, saw her own baby-self engirdled with unquenchable flames. For had she not fretted over her Sunday-school lesson that very morning (longing to dress her new doll), and said it was too long, and oh! that she hated the catechism?