I think I shall pray for that." "Oh, horrors! don't! I'd rather never be saved," Lillie answered with a fervent sincerity.
The story was repeated afterwards as an amusing _bon mot_, and a specimen of the barbarity to which religious fanaticism may lead; and yet we question whether John the Baptist had not the right of it.
For it must at once appear, that, had the small-pox made the above-mentioned change in Lillie's complexion at sixteen, the entire course of her life would have taken another turn.

The whole world then would have united in letting her know that she must live to some useful purpose, or be nobody and nothing.

Schoolmasters would have scolded her if she idled over her lessons; and her breaking down in arithmetic, and mistakes in history, would no longer have been regarded as interesting.

Clergymen, consulted on her spiritual state, would have told her freely that she was a miserable sinner, who, except she repented, must likewise perish.

In short, all those bitter and wholesome truths, which strengthen and invigorate the virtues of plain people, might possibly have led her a long way on towards saintship.
As it was, little Lillie was confessedly no saint; and yet, if much of a sinner, society has as much to answer for as she.