Staubbach, how we visited Lausanne, and Berne, and Geneva, how we stood
beside the wounded Lion, and shuddered in the dungeon of Chillon, how we
walked distances we never should have attempted in England, how we
younger ones lost ourselves on a Sunday afternoon, after ascending a
mountain, and returned footsore and weary, to meet a party going out to
seek us with lanterns and ropes. All these things have been so often
described that I will not add one more description to the list, nor dwell
on that strange feeling of awe, of wonder, of delight, that everyone must
have felt, when the glory of the peaks clad in "everlasting snow" is for
the first time seen against the azure sky on the horizon, and you whisper
to yourself, half breathless: "The Alps! The Alps!"

During that autumn I became engaged to the Rev. Frank Besant, giving up
with a sigh of regret my dreams of the "religious life", and substituting
for them the work which would have to be done as the wife of a priest,
laboring ever in the church and among the poor. A queer view, some people
may think, for a girl to take of married life, but it was the natural
result of my living the life of the Early Church, of my enthusiasm for
religious work. To me a priest was a half-angelic creature, whose whole
life was consecrated to heaven; all that was deepest and truest in my
nature chafed against my useless days, longed for work, yearned to devote
itself, as I had read women saints had done, to the service of the church
and the poor, to the battling against sin and misery. "You will have more
opportunity for doing good as a clergyman's wife than as anything else,"
was one of the pleas urged on my reluctance. My ignorance of all that
marriage meant was as profound as though I had been a child of four, and
my knowledge of the world was absolutely _nil_. My darling mother meant
all that was happiest for me when she shielded me from all knowledge of
sorrow and of sin, when she guarded me from the smallest idea of the
marriage relation, keeping me ignorant as a baby till I left her home a