I was wrought up to such a pitch that I actually jumped up and gazed in the direction to which he pointed, while the picture glowed before my eyes and remained with me for months afterward.  I cannot forbear saying that, although high respect is due to the intellectual, moral, and spiritual gifts of the venerable ex-president of Oberlin College, such preaching worked incalculable harm to the very souls he sought to save.  Fear of the judgment seized my soul.  Visions of the lost haunted my dreams.  Mental anguish prostrated my health.  Dethronement of my reason was apprehended by friends.  But he was sincere, so peace to his ashes!  Returning home, I often at night roused my father from his slumbers to pray for me, lest I should be cast into the bottomless pit before morning.

To change the current of my thoughts, a trip was planned to Niagara, and it was decided that the subject of religion was to be tabooed altogether.  Accordingly our party, consisting of my sister, her husband, my father and myself, started in our private carriage, and for six weeks I heard nothing on the subject.  About this time Gall and Spurzheim published their works on phrenology, followed by Combe’s “Constitution of Man,” his “Moral Philosophy,” and many other liberal works, all so rational and opposed to the old theologies that they produced a profound impression on my brother-in-law’s mind.  As we had these books with us, reading and discussing by the way, we all became deeply interested in the new ideas.  Thus, after many months of weary wandering in the intellectual labyrinth of “The Fall of Man,” “Original Sin,” “Total Depravity,” “God’s Wrath,” “Satan’s Triumph,” “The Crucifixion,” “The Atonement,” and “Salvation by Faith,” I found my way out of the darkness into the clear sunlight of Truth.  My religious superstitions gave place to rational ideas based on scientific facts, and in proportion, as I looked at everything from a new standpoint, I grew more and more happy, day by day.  Thus, with a delightful journey in the month of June, an entire change in my course of reading and the current of my thoughts, my mind was restored to its normal condition.  I view it as one of the greatest crimes to shadow the minds of the young with these gloomy superstitions; and with fears of the unknown and the unknowable to poison all their joy in life.

After the restraints of childhood at home and in school, what a period of irrepressible joy and freedom comes to us in girlhood with the first taste of liberty.  Then is our individuality in a measure recognized and our feelings and opinions consulted; then we decide where and when we will come and go, what we will eat, drink, wear, and do.  To suit one’s own fancy in clothes, to buy what one likes, and wear what one chooses is a great privilege to most young people.  To go out at pleasure, to walk, to ride, to drive, with no one to say us nay or question our right to liberty, this is indeed like a birth into a new world of happiness and freedom.  This is the period, too, when the emotions rule us, and we idealize everything in life; when love and hope make the present an ecstasy and the future bright with anticipation.