I yield to temptation almost as soon as it assails me. My deepest
feelings are very evanescent. I am beset behind and before, and my
sins take away all my happiness. But that which most constantly besets
me is pride--I can trace almost all my sins back to it."
In the mean time, the school is prospering. February 16, 1827,
Catherine writes to Dr. Beecher: "My affairs go on well. The stock is
all taken up, and next week I hope to have out the prospectus of the
'Hartford Female Seminary.' I hope the building will be done, and all
things in order, by June. The English lady is coming with twelve
pupils from New York." Speaking of Harriet, who was at this time with
her father in Boston, she adds: "I have received some letters from
Harriet to-day which make me feel uneasy. She says, 'I don't know as I
am fit for anything, and I have thought that I could wish to die
young, and let the remembrance of me and my faults perish in the
grave, rather than live, as I fear I do, a trouble to every one. You
don't know how perfectly wretched I often feel: so useless, so weak,
so destitute of all energy. Mamma often tells me that I am a strange,
inconsistent being. Sometimes I could not sleep, and have groaned and
cried till midnight, while in the day-time I tried to appear cheerful
and succeeded so well that papa reproved me for laughing so much. I
was so absent sometimes that I made strange mistakes, and then they
all laughed at me, and I laughed, too, though I felt as though I
should go distracted.
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