which was opening, like a prismatic view in every shade of coloring, before her awakening faculties and higher consciousness of a duty to be performed.
Was that duty to devolve on her,—insignificant, uneducated as she was? without a friend to sustain her, or one even to whom she might confide the noble impulses of her soul, and, in return, receive sympathizing counsel?
The past, with its sufferings, rose up to urge her on; the present, with its oppressive inaction, was unendurable; and the future presented no attraction, save as it should reap through her some inestimable benefit to the world.
She saw all around her evidences of the desolating scourge that had robbed her of her childhood, blighted the fair promises of early womanhood, laid her parents in dishonored graves, and now hung like a pall over the budding hopes of every hearth-stone in the land. Was there not work here?
But what could she expect to do when the mighty ones of the earth were silent? True, there was sometimes an effort made, rarely a successful one, to save an individual, while tens of thousands were every day rushing into the whirling vortex. The church occasionally breathed its anathemas against excessive drinking, which availed little, since it would have toppled to the ground if its denunciations had fallen on the heads of those who had grown to be its chief pillars and support through the ill-gotten gains they had derived from holding out temptations to that very class whose wickedness was condemned. Surely, a fearful responsibility rested somewhere,—a
