the ripple of her personal influence far out into those magic circles of infinite distance, which the casting of an idea forms on the sea of thought. She wanted girls, many girls, countless girls,—to receive a higher view of life by having known her; to enter more fully into the inheritance of their estate through her ministration. No other relation than that of teacher and pupil, could connect this circuit of spiritual influence.

Teachers—the world was full of them in those days, just such as they are now; teachers who bend beneath their burden, who seek in their business but a means of livelihood, and who are ready to lay aside the textbook and close the desk, when fortune smiles: who see their day's end at four o'clock, and their happiness, at the dawn of vacation. But there have always been, of teachers, a few who regarded their work as Williams regarded his, and who, as in Mattie's case, with no spur of necessity, selected it from all careers the future had to offer.

But we do not mean that these highest ambitions of a teacher's sovereign realm took definite shape in the girl's mind in her twelfth year; for see! She is no longer twelve, but thirteen—fourteen— fifteen—how fast she is getting her education!—sixteen—

And then the blow fell—we said it would!—hours too late, and thought too intense, and eyes too severely taxed! Has it been for nothing, after all? She must flutter back home, now, like a disabled bird; high ideas all lost in a maze, definite purposes fused white-hot in a raging fever.

Not only so, but in her sudden breakdown of vital force, there is no one to understand the despair over her own weakness, except, indeed, that brother Joe who alone understands her. Mother and father are both dead, now; and the sisters who are proud of her attainments—for she had finished in the Junior Year at Daughters' College,—wonder that she is not satisfied. Is it not enough? Already she is "educated."

And she is sixteen; and her inheritance assures her of future freedom from necessity. It will be a long time, the doctors say, before she can resume her studies—a year, at least; maybe two. But does that matter? In two years she will be of age, and rich, or nearly so, in her own right.

"And then," said brother Joe, "I will find her a rich husband, and see her handsomely established for life!"

Not that Joe had himself married; he was too busy teaching school, and too absorbed in his beloved work; but he felt the responsibility of his guardianship. Mattie was too ill, too broken in spirit, to combat his plans or to form any of her own. She could only lie silent and, suffering, uncertain of the outcome.

Leaving her thus, as we found her at the beginning, in suffering and tears, let us make a journey to Mason County, in search of that possible husband. He may not prove so rich as brother Joe could desire. We shall see.

CHAPTER II.

IDEALS.

But no, the biographer, on second thought, will not go up to May's Lick in the present chapter. Let that expedition be reserved for Chapter Third. And let those who care for the story of lives merely for events, not for motive-springs of action, skip the present chapter, if they will. It will be to their loss, if they do so; for what life is to be understood, without an understanding of the principles that direct its course?

In the life we are seeking to trace, there were three great principles that shaped events. The first has already been amplified—the resolve to become a teacher of girls. The other two must be defined—one's thought of country, and one's religious faith.

In those days, a man who had no opinion on the "slavery question," or on the "current reformation," was no true Kentuckian. If one has slaves, his children are not only disposed to regard slavery as right, but as highly fortunate and desirable. Also, when one's religion is being placed on trial at every crossroad's log-schoolhouse, the smallest girls in the household have some opinions on the Gospel Restored, on Election, on Baptism.

"Studying too Hard."

"Brother Joe."

In the veins of Mattie Myers flowed Southern blood, and it was with the South that she sympathized with all that fire of young enthusiasm that characterized Southern adherents in those days. As for her religion, that calls for more particular description, because it is indistinguishably blended with all her emotions and purposes. It was no more Mattie's intention to become a teacher of girls, than it was to spread a knowledge of the Gospel as she herself understood it.

In portraying the belief of this child—a belief that time served only to strengthen—it is far from our thought to influence the particular faith of the reader. That biographer is unworthy of his task who allows his own opinions to color his narrative. What I believe has no more to do with the life of Mattie Myers, than has the belief of the reader; and this is the story of a life, not a controversy in disguise.

But at the same time, it is not only due the reader, but the object of the biography, that the faith of Mattie should be presented so clearly and so fairly that no one can fail to understand what it was. I shall do my utmost to make it plain. It occupied too great a part of the girl's life and the woman's life, to be ignored. As she sat at her father's knee in Stanford, as she rested with her brother on the porch of the boarding-house in Lancaster, as she made her stage-journeys, in short, where-ever she was, she heard religion discussed in all its phases. And that phase which appealed to her was the same that Walter Scott—kinsman of the illustrious novelist—had proclaimed from state to state.

One peculiarity of this faith was, that whoever accepted it with zeal, became more or less antagonistic, combative. It was not because it despised peace, although peace, in later years has sometimes proved fatal to it; but it was because every hand seemed turned against it. Had it asked for peace in 1850, that petition would doubtless have been derided.

And why? Because an acceptance of this faith meant an end to all creeds, to all sects, to all denominational barriers. Therefore all denominations felt that the faith of Mattie Myers had raised its hand against them. When Walter Scott and his co-workers prayed the Savior's prayer that all might be one, what—if that prayer be granted—was to become of the many?

It may be true, in the Twentieth Century, that one need only have enough money to hire a hall, in order to start a new religion; that Society has but to smile upon the dancing of Dervishes to popularize Orientalism; that a woman, by the writing of a book, can convince intelligent thousands that diseases are but delusions of their mortal minds—perhaps instincts would be a better word, since unimaginative quadrupeds sometimes "think" themselves sick. But whether this is true or not, it is certain that, in the first half of the Nineteenth Century, it required much more than money, and more than the writing of many books, this endeavor to