It was literally the culmination of things --- I had never found a principle to live by. Life was to me a jumble of things, useless, conflicting, torturing. All my good intentions came to naught and things and people were perverse. My heart troubled me so I made all preparations for sudden death. My headaches grew so frequent and severe that I thought I would surely go insane if I didn't die. I was afraid to live, and I was afraid to die. Not afraid of what might come to me after death, but what might overtake my motherless children, though goodness knows what I thought I could save them from, having so utterly failed to bring them or myself up as I meant to.

So I went to the depths of despair. I had tried my best and failed utterly. There was no place to turn. Of course, nobody knew all this. I was too proud to tell anything. Every Sunday I put on my accustomed manner and took my usual place in the church choir, even when my throat troubled me so that I had to leave before the sermon commenced.

All this time I was agnostic as to religion and sceptical as to a divine and superhuman power. But when I got to the end of my own power I was not so anxious to deny a God-power. Everything else having failed me, my own wisdom and power and intentions included, I began to wish there might be something or other to help me out of my self-digged miry pit of despond.

I ended by believing in a power and purpose behind things, and I set myself diligently to seek the kingdom of Good and to be right with it. I let go all the old things and started anew, with the new testament as