But this account, which might as properly belong to a former period of my life as to the present moment, leads me far afield.  It was the pleasure I took in literature, the discipline of mind I found arise from it, that made me eager to lead Perdita to the same pursuits.  I began with light hand and gentle allurement; first exciting her curiosity, and then satisfying it in such a way as might occasion her, at the same time that she half forgot her sorrows in occupation, to find in the hours that succeeded a reaction of benevolence and toleration.

Intellectual activity, though not directed towards books, had always been my sister’s characteristic.  It had been displayed early in life, leading her out to solitary musing among her native mountains, causing her to form innumerous combinations from common objects, giving strength to her perceptions, and swiftness to their arrangement.  Love had come, as the rod of the master-prophet, to swallow up every minor propensity.  Love had doubled all her excellencies, and placed a diadem on her genius.  Was she to cease to love?  Take the colours and odour from the rose, change the sweet nutriment of mother’s milk to gall and poison; as easily might you wean Perdita from love.  She grieved for the loss of Raymond with an anguish, that exiled all smile from her lips, and trenched sad lines on her brow of beauty.  But each day seemed to change the nature of her suffering, and every succeeding hour forced her to alter (if so I may style it) the fashion of her soul’s mourning garb.  For a time music was able to satisfy the cravings of her mental hunger, and her melancholy thoughts renewed themselves in each change of key, and varied with every alteration in the strain.  My schooling first impelled her towards books; and, if music had been the food of sorrow, the productions of the wise became its medicine.  The acquisition of unknown languages was too tedious an occupation, for one who referred every expression to the universe within, and read not, as many do, for the mere sake of filling up time; but who was still questioning herself and her author, moulding every idea in a thousand ways, ardently desirous for the discovery of truth in every sentence.  She sought to improve her understanding; mechanically her heart and dispositions became soft and gentle under this benign discipline.  After awhile she discovered, that amidst all her newly acquired knowledge, her own character, which formerly she fancied that she thoroughly understood, became the first in rank among the terrae incognitae, the pathless wilds of a country that had no chart.  Erringly and strangely she began the task of self-examination with self-condemnation.  And then again she became aware of her own excellencies, and began to balance with juster scales the shades of good and evil.  I, who longed beyond words, to restore her to the happiness it was still in her power to enjoy, watched with anxiety the result of these internal proceedings.