In the spring of 1862 it chanced that the Bishop of Ohio visited Paris, and Mr. Forbes, then English chaplain at the Church of the Rue d’Aguesseau, arranged to have a confirmation.  As said above, I was under deep “religious impressions”, and, in fact, with the exception of that little aberration in Germany, I was decidedly a pious girl.  I looked on theatres (never having been to one) as traps set by Satan for the destruction of foolish souls; I was quite determined never to go to a ball, and was prepared to “suffer for conscience sake”—­little prig that I was—­if I was desired to go to one.  I was consequently quite prepared to take upon myself the vows made in my name at my baptism, and to renounce the world, the flesh, and the devil, with a heartiness and sincerity only equalled by my profound ignorance of the things I so readily resigned.  That confirmation was to me a very solemn matter; the careful preparation, the prolonged prayers, the wondering awe as to the “sevenfold gifts of the Spirit”, which were to be given by “the laying on of hands”, all tended to excitement.  I could scarcely control myself as I knelt at the altar rails, and felt as though the gentle touch of the aged Bishop, which fluttered for an instant on my bowed head, were the very touch of the wing of that “Holy Spirit, heavenly Dove”, whose presence had been so earnestly invoked.  Is there anything easier, I wonder, than to make a young and sensitive girl “intensely religious”.

My mother came over for the confirmation and for the “first communion” on Easter Sunday, and we had a delightful fortnight together, returning home after we had wandered hand-in-hand over all my favorite haunts.  The summer of 1862 was spent with Miss Marryat at Sidmouth, and, wise woman that she was, she now carefully directed our studies with a view to our coming enfranchisement from the “school-room.”  More and more were we trained to work alone; our leading-strings were slackened, so that we never felt them save when we blundered; and I remember that when I once complained, in loving fashion, that she was “teaching me so little”, she told me that I was getting old enough to be trusted to work by myself, and that I must not expect to “have Auntie for a crutch all through life”.  And I venture to say that this gentle withdrawal of constant supervision and teaching was one of the wisest and kindest things that this noble-hearted woman ever did for us.  It is the usual custom to keep girls in the school-room until they “come out”; then, suddenly, they are left to their own devices, and, bewildered by their unaccustomed freedom, they waste time that might be priceless for their intellectual growth.  Lately, the opening of universities to women has removed this danger for the more ambitious; but at the time of which I am writing no one dreamed of the changes soon to be made in the direction of the “higher education of women”.