Oh, dear, dear! Why need my father have been snatched away from me,
when so many other girls have theirs spared to them? He loved me so!
He indulged me so much! He was so proud of me! What have I done that
I should have this dreadful thing happen to me? I shall never be as
happy as I was before. Now I shall always be expecting trouble. Yes,
I dare say mother will go next. Why shouldn't I brood over this
sorrow? I like to brood over it; I like to think how wretched I am; I
like to have long, furious fits of crying, lying on my face on the
bed.

Jan. I, 1832.-People talk a great deal about the blessed effects of
sorrow. But I do not see any good it has done me to lose my dear
father, and as to mother she was good enough before.

We are going to leave our pleasant home, where all of us children
were born, and move into a house in an out-of-the-way street. By
selling this, and renting a smaller one, mother hopes, with economy,
to carry James through college. And I must go to Miss Higgins' school
because it is less expensive than Mr. Stone's. Miss Higgins, indeed!
I never could bear her! A few months ago, how I should have cried and
stormed at the idea of her school. But the great sorrow swallows up
the little trial.

I tried once more, this morning, as it is the first day of the year,
to force myself to begin to love God.

I want to do it; I know I ought to do it; but I cannot. I go through
the form of saying something that I try to pass off as praying, every
day now. But I take no pleasure in it, as good people say they do,