MIRACLES It was not always in admiration that the finger was pointed at me.

One day I found myself the centre of an excited group in the middle of the schoolyard, with a dozen girls interrupting each other to express their disapproval of me.

For I had coolly told them, in answer to a question, that I did not believe in God.
How had I arrived at such a conviction?
How had I come, from praying and fasting and Psalm-singing, to extreme impiety?
Alas! my backsliding had cost me no travail of spirit.

Always weak in my faith, playing at sanctity as I played at soldiers, just as I was in the mood or not, I had neglected my books of devotion and given myself up to profane literature at the first opportunity, in Vitebsk; and I never took up my prayer book again.

On my return to Polotzk, America loomed so near that my imagination was fully occupied, and I did not revive the secret experiments with which I used to test the nature and intention of Deity.