Vashti's Fate — page 157: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

152 AT HOME. such depths of affliction, when the waters of a despair = peculiarly your own will hem you round so close, that you, poor, weary child, will be compelled to follow the cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night, as those old Israelites did. It will be your only redemption. My child, you can do nothing of yourself. When you realize this, and cease to struggle against God's ways, then will come the beginning of the end you ought to attain. It is not for you to trouble yourself about the future. It is for you todo as ~~ near right as you know how. ‘Our Father, Who art in- Heaven,’ will take care of the rest. Meanwhile, work, work, work. There is nothing better for the mind than to keep the hands busy.” And Nora pondered and mourned, and mourned and pondered, and tried to follow the dictation, but not hope- fully. Alas! physically and mentally she had reached a state of prostration that would not suffer her to hope, but still trying to do her work faithfully, and leave the rest in Better Hands. CHAPTER XIX. AT HOME. It was the last of February, and Vashti had been from home a little over three months. One evening Nora was sitting in Mrs. Everleigh’s room, reading to her. They sat before the fire, Nora’s little dimpled hand in her mother’s thin and slender clasp. Now and then she paused for little — ; running comments on what she was reading, to which Mrs. Everleigh gave low, smiling replies.