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PRELUDE . Who that cares much to know the history of man , and how the mysterious mixture behaves under the varying experiments of Time , has not dwelt , at least briefly , on the life of Saint Theresa , has not smiled with some gentleness at the thought of the little girl walking forth one morning hand - in - hand with her still smaller brother , to go and seek martyrdom in the country of the Moors ? Out they toddled from rugged Avila , wide - eyed and helpless - looking as two fawns , but with human hearts , already beating to a national idea ; until domestic reality met them in the shape of uncles , and turned them back from their great resolve . That child - pilgrimage was a fit beginning . Theresa’s passionate , ideal nature demanded an epic life : what were many - volumed romances of chivalry and the social conquests of a brilliant girl to her ? Her flame quickly burned up that light fuel ; and , fed from within , soared after some illimitable satisfaction , some object which would never justify weariness , which would reconcile self - despair with the rapturous consciousness of life beyond self . She found her epos in the reform of a religious order . That Spanish woman who lived three hundred years ago , was certainly not the last of her kind . Many Theresas have been born who found for themselves no epic life wherein there was a constant unfolding of far - resonant action ; perhaps only a life of mistakes , the offspring of a certain spiritual grandeur ill - matched with the meanness of opportunity ; perhaps a tragic failure which found no sacred poet and sank unwept into oblivion . With dim lights and tangled circumstance they tried to shape their thought and deed in noble agreement ; but after all , to common eyes their struggles seemed mere inconsistency and formlessness ; for these later - born Theresas were helped by no coherent social faith and order which could perform the function of knowledge for the ardently willing soul . Their ardor alternated between a vague ideal and the common yearning of womanhood ; so that the one was disapproved as extravagance , and the other condemned as a lapse . Some have felt that these blundering lives are due to the inconvenient indefiniteness with which the Supreme Power has fashioned the natures of women : if there were one level of feminine incompetence as strict as the ability to count three and no more , the social lot of women might be treated with scientific certitude . Meanwhile the indefiniteness remains , and the limits of variation are really much wider than any one would imagine from the sameness of women’s coiffure and the favorite love - stories in prose and verse . Here and there a cygnet is reared uneasily among the ducklings in the brown pond , and never finds the living stream in fellowship with its own oary - footed kind . Here and there is born a Saint Theresa , foundress of nothing , whose loving heart - beats and sobs after an unattained goodness tremble off and are dispersed among hindrances , instead of centring in some long - recognizable deed .
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