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Show 131 In the evening at the request of Sister Pratt, though against my inclination, went to a meeting at Lincoln Hall. The meeting was conducted by a very intellectual woman but my ideas of religion are far from being in consonance with hers. It is no pleasure or benefit to listen to such doctrine so I think I shall not go soon again.33 During the ensuing two weeks, Ellis notes that 1) general conference is going on in Salt Lake and that for two more years she must deny herself the pleasure of attending; 2) she is now feeling a lively interest in her study of "Digestion;" 3) had Willie been spared to her, he would have been eight years old-and Anna four; and 4) the explosion at home "of the four Powder Magazines" with so few lives lost, but "five souls suddenly ushered into Eternity." On Sunday, April 16th, just as Ellis is beginning her weekly letter home, she receives an "invitation to take dinner with Dr. Dixon, our Professor of Anatomy," so is obliged to postpone writing. "Spent a very pleasant day, saw life in several phases entirely new to me but I find all mortals have their ups and downs." Evening brings an opportunity to attend the meeting of Friends. Ellis concludes it is a "strange manner to worship God. Who would not be a Saint?" April 19th produces an expression of concern about her studies and whether she can harness her "undisciplined mind" sufficiently to graduate in the "given time." Her trepidations dissolve away when, the very next day, being called upon in class to demonstrate an equation, her performance brings high praise from Professor Bodley. Dear Ellis! Her diary bears this response: "She gave me the honor. I give it to my Heavenly Father." |