Chapter 20

XX.

APRIL.

I HAVE had a new lesson which has almost broken my heart. In looking
over his father's papers, Ernest found a little journal, brief in its
records indeed, but we learn from it that on all those wedding and
birthdays, when I fancied his austere religion made him hold aloof
from our merry-making, he was spending the time in fasting and
praying for us and for our children! Oh, shall I ever learn the sweet
charity that thinketh no evil, and believeth all things? What
blessings may not have descended upon us and our children through
those prayers! What evils may they not have warded off! Dear old
father! Oh, that I could once more put my loving arms about him and
bid him welcome to our home! And how gladly would I now confess to
him all my unjust judgments concerning him and entreat his
forgiveness! Must life always go on thus? Must I always be erring,
ignorant and blind? How I hate this arrogant sweeping past my brother
man; this utter ignoring of his hidden life?

I see now that it is well for mother that she did not come to live
with me at the beginning of my married life. I should not have borne
with her little peculiarities, nor have made her half so happy as I
can now. I thank God that my varied disappointments and discomforts,
my feeble health, my poverty, my mortifications have done me some
little good, and driven me to Him a thousand times because I could
not get along without His help. But I am not satisfied with my state