Life Sketches Manuscript - Ellen G. White

you would talk to them just as if you were in a meeting. 'This,' you said, 'is
the way I learned to speak in public.'"
My teachers advised me to leave school, and not pursue my studies
further until my health should improve.
Three years later I made another effort to obtain an education, by
entering a seminary for young ladies in Portland. But on attempting to
resume my studies, my health again failed, and it became apparent that if I
remained in school, it would be at the expense of my life. It was the hardest
struggle of my young days to yield to my feebleness, and decide that I must
give up my studies, and relinquish the cherished hope of gaining an
education. I did not attend school after I was twelve years old.
My ambition to become a scholar had been very great, and when I
pondered over my disappointed hopes, and the thought I was to be an invalid
for life, I was unreconciled to my lot, and at times murmured against the
providence of God in thus afflicting me. The future stretched out before me
dark and cheerless.
Had I opened my mind to my mother, she might have instructed,
soothed, and encouraged me; but I concealed my troubled feeling from my
family and friends, fearing that they could not understand me. The happy
confidence in my Saviour's love that I had enjoyed during my illness was
gone. My prospect of worldly enjoyment was blighted, and heaven seemed
closed against me.
After I struggled with this unreconciled spirit for days, the tempter
came in a new guise, and increased my distress by condemning me for
having allowed such rebellious thought to take possession of my mind. My
conscience was perplexed, and I knew no way to extricate myself from the
labyrinth in which I was wondering.
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