[Sidenote: Saintly Recluse]
She was an anemic-looking girl of fifteen, her pretty brown hair pulled
tightly back and braided with Puritanic neatness, her thin little body
clad in the most severe of gingham frocks. Miss Corliss noticed her the
first day, noted her letter-perfect recitation in English and her
aloofness from the other students, and wondered what her story was.
In a few days the Juniors came to Miss Corliss for advice and help in
planning their fall frolic. When they came to the business of assigning
committees, she made a special plea that Susan should be given some work
to do, as she wanted to see her on friendlier terms with her classmates.
“Susan White? Oh, she’ll never have anything to do with the parties. She
thinks they’re wicked. She stays at home and reads the Bible all the
time, Miss Corliss.”
“But if you ask her, won’t she help with the work and come to the
party?”
“No, Miss Corliss, we’ve tried it. We used to invite her but she always
turned us down, and now we don’t bother. Her mother is kind of crazy
about religion, I guess, and Susan is growing to be just like her.”
Miss Corliss talked to Susan and found her sweetly frank about her
views. She was in no sense “crazy,” but she had been led to a piety
unusual in one so young, through the influence of her widowed mother,
who had found consolation for bereavement in extreme devotion. Susan,
feeling it her duty to devote herself to her mother, had gladly denied
herself the usual pleasures of youth and found real joy in her
asceticism.
“What can you do for her?” the principal, Mr. Waiting, asked.
“Do for her? I shall not do anything for her—she doesn’t need anything
done for her. She is not abnormal; she is only unusual. She is one of
the happiest girls in school, but she is one of the occasional people,
very occasional nowadays, who find their whole happiness in a very
personal, mystic type of religious service. To try to make her over to
be like the other girls would be a great mistake.”
“But this isn’t the age of the religious recluse, you know.”
“Yes, I know. That’s why one mustn’t interfere with them. If she were
living in the time of Saint Francis or of Jonathan Edwards, I should
suspect that her saintliness was copied from a model too often urged
upon her. As it is, she keeps to her mysticism and asceticism in spite
of every suggestion to the contrary here at school. I shall watch her
for signs of unhealthfulness, but as yet I don’t see any. She has as
much right, you know, to develop her talent for religious devotion as
Stanley Brand has to develop his for mechanics.”
“I never thought of it in that light. Well, probably you’re right, only,
as you say, be on the lookout for signs of a pathological development.”