From my earliest recollection I was considered not a strong child and of a very sensitive nature. My early schooldays were interrupted by periods of illness, and I grew to young womanhood cumbered by various beliefs of disease, as a part of my inheritance. Kind parents did all that could be done within the resources of medical methods of treatment, hygiene, etc., to alleviate and cure. There were intervals when health seemed fairly well established; but regular attendance at school, unusual exertion, sudden changes, or winter weather were sufficient to bring on one or more of the ills to which I was subject.
Longing to lead a useful life, teaching was the occupation I desired to follow, and I struggled on, preparing for this work, notwithstanding physical hindrances. That I might study at an academy, I left home for a season; the new environment proving beneficial in so far that I was able to teach during the next two years. With the future brightening before me, I then entered a Normal School for further preparation as a teacher.
During all these years I had a great unsatisfied yearning to know the real meaning of life; and at school I was led to consider seriously motives and aims, which caused me to feel keenly the lack of a sure foundation upon which to base my life-work. But no satisfying conception of God and no solution of the problem of life could I find in the doctrines of the churches, and other theories investigated failed to meet my need.
