I shall be quite ashamed to tell you the strange effect it had on me.  I know it was very wrong to read any book without permission to do so.  If my time were to come over again, I would go and tell my mamma that there was a library in the house, and ask her to permit me to read a little while every day in some book that she might think proper to select for me.  But unfortunately I did not then recollect that I ought to do this:  the reason of my strange forgetfulness might be that my mother, following the example of her patroness, had almost wholly discontinued talking to me.  I scarcely ever heard a word addressed to me from morning to night.  If it were not for the old servants saying “Good morning to you, miss Margaret,” as they passed me in the long passages, I should have been the greatest part of the day in as perfect a solitude as Robinson Crusoe.  It must have been because I was never spoken to at all, that I forgot what was right and what was wrong, for I do not believe that I ever remembered I was doing wrong all the time I was reading in the library.  A great many of the leaves in “Mahometism Explained” were torn out, but enough remained to make me imagine that Ishmael was the true son of Abraham:  I read here that the true descendants of Abraham were known by a light which streamed from the middle of their foreheads.  It said, that Ishmael’s father and mother first saw this light streaming from his forehead, as he was lying asleep in the cradle.  I was very sorry so many of the leaves were torn out, for it was as entertaining as a fairy tale.  I used to read the history of Ishmael, and then go and look at him in the tapestry, and then read his history again.  When I had almost learned the history of Ishmael by heart, I read the rest of the book, and then I came to the history of Mahomet, who was there said to be the last descendant of Abraham.

If Ishmael had engaged so much of my thoughts, how much more so must Mahomet?  His history was full of nothing but wonders from the beginning to the end.  The book said, that those who believed all the wonderful stories which were related of Mahomet were called Mahometans, and true believers:—­I concluded that I must be a Mahometan, for I believed every word I read.

At length I met with something which I also believed, though I trembled as I read it:—­this was, that after we are dead, we are to pass over a narrow bridge, which crosses a bottomless gulf.  The bridge was described to be no wider than a silken thread; and it said, that all who were not Mahometans would slip on one side of this bridge, and drop into the tremendous gulf that had no bottom.  I considered myself as a Mahometan, yet I was perfectly giddy whenever I thought of passing over this bridge.

One day, seeing the old lady totter across the room, a sudden terror seized me, for I thought, how would she ever be able to get over the bridge.  Then too it was, that I first recollected that my mother would also be in imminent danger; for I imagined she had never heard the name of Mahomet, because I foolishly conjectured this book had been locked up for ages in the library, and was utterly unknown to the rest of the world.