The isolation that belonged to my condition wrought indeed to
the intensifying of my individuality, but that again intensified my
consciousness of need more than of wrong, until the passion
blossomed almost into assurance, and at length I sought even with
agony the aid to which my wretchedness seemed to have a right. My
longing was mainly for a refuge, for some corner into which I might
creep, where I should be concealed and so at rest. The sole triumph
I coveted over my persecutors was to know that they could not find
me--that I had a friend stronger than they. It is no wonder I should
not remember when I began to pray, and hope that God heard me. I
used to fancy to myself that I lay in his hand and peeped through
his fingers at my foes. That was at night, for my deformity brought
me one blessed comfort--that I had no bedfellow. This I felt at
first as both a sad deprivation and a painful rejection, but I
learned to pray the sooner for the loneliness, and the heartier from
the solitude which was as a chamber with closed door.
"I do not know what I might have taken to had I been made like other
people, or what plans my mother cherished for me. But it soon became
evident, as time passed and I grew no taller but more mis-shapen,
that to bring me up to a profession would be but to render my
deformity the more painful to myself.
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