Well, as to the Theatre! I believe I must confess myself disappointed. Charles Kean as Macbeth did not satisfy me. Mrs. C. Kean very good (I suppose) as Lady Macbeth. Yet not _real_, as Shakespeare surely should be. After the murder of Duncan was perhaps the grandest, most awful, most real.... The scene where Macduff learns his loss more _real_ than most. The fighting at the end ludicrous.... I thought there would be decent fencing.”
A few months later she went (with Miss Wodehouse) to a ritualistic church, and was moved to hot indignation.
“How can this man wear a priestly robe in the Church, and subscribe to her 6th and 20th most scriptural articles? Well, indeed, might we pray for the state of the Church Militant, when within her walls are such teachers.
Yet was I right in not staying the sacrament because this sermon so stirred my indignation? ‘The unworthiness of ministers hinders not the effect of the Sacrament.’ Perhaps I was wrong. Yet I could not have stayed in a peaceful or holy mind.
To the law and to the testimony! How precious is such unanswerable decree!—so final a court of appeal!”
A note is inserted in the margin,—(“This May 1859. Sic transit! Feb. 11, 1865!”).
Meanwhile her certificate examination was drawing near, and mathematics absorbed most of her thoughts. On July 1st she writes:
“Certificate examination nearly 4 hours. Out of 23 problems did 20½. So I trust I am pretty safe. I did get rather frightened as the time drew on, but really have worked hard and I trust won. Sent a telegram, ‘Success’ to Mother, though the declaration is not yet made.
July 28th. My certificate won triumphantly and marked, ‘with great credit’.”
“I have a great deal of work in College,” she confesses some time later. I take 8 classes,—English Literature, English History, Mental and Moral Philosophy, Theology, Church History, Algebra, Geometry, and German Conversation; and have 7 pupils. I am afraid it is too much altogether.”
And what about the ordinary traditional preoccupations and vanities of a young girl’s life in the midst of these manifold interests and claims?— what about thoughts of dress, of personal appearance, of love and marriage? Well, obviously there was little room left for any of these. S. J.-B. was under the impression that she cared a good deal about dress, and she would not have been flattered if anyone had expressed a different opinion. As a matter of fact she never had time to give the subject much more than a passing thought, and the poor little remnant of an allowance that remained when more pressing claims and numerous little charities had been met, was barely sufficient to pay for the work of an ordinary seamstress. The adaptable coat and skirt, and the endless variety of cheap ready-made dress had not then come to the aid of the educated working-girl, and S. J.-B. did not realize the difficulty of the problem she had to tackle.