[37] struggle: I do nothing right. 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:
Speaking of Harriet, who was at this time with her father in Boston, she adds: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.
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 daytime 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. I wrote rules; made out a regular system for dividing my time; but my feelings vary so much that it is almost impossible for me to be regular.”
