Lizzie Borden by Elizabeth Engstrom Page A

things to do, so the next time she wanted to disappear for the day to just bloody well tell someone so Abby didn’t make her run around hollering for her all day long.
    Lizzie had forgotten all about that day. She wondered if the pillow and the doll were still in the midst of that tree. She wondered if another child had found that wonderful peaceful paradise within that living, fragrant room. She’d ask Father if she could accompany him the next time he went out to the farm. She’d like to look for that old tree and see. She’d like to go out to the farm and spend some time in the quiet. Fishing. She’d like to go fishing.
    She wondered if this was the way Beatrice felt the first day she rented her first flat in the city, and had a home of her own.
    In her room, Lizzie got that silk scarf she’d envisioned, a needlepointed pillow and her hand mirror. She’d get another mirror the next time she went to town, but for now she was anxious to do her exercises again in her new space, to see if things were different.
    Abby was busy with Maggie doing the spring cleaning, so nobody noticed, really, when Lizzie left by the back door. Even so, she stopped at the barn door to make sure she was going in unseen.
    I’ll have to get a latch for the door, she thought, so it can be locked from the inside. Then she climbed up the ladder, which always made her feel like a man, and began to rearrange.
    When everything was in its place up at the hayloft, it looked like a shrine. Lizzie stepped back to the edge of the loft and surveyed her new room. It did look like a shrine. Like an altar, with Pathways , the Beatrice book, lying on the center of the overturned crate like a bible.
    The book. The marvelous book. Even though it admonished her not to, Lizzie had read ahead a few of the exercises. All harmless. All, in fact, seemed a little bit ridiculous, just like the one she just performed with the candles and the mirror, but she had faith that Beatrice would not steer her wrong.
    Each exercise was to be done for a full thirty days, so she was still only on the second exercise. Her letters to Beatrice were full of questions: Who wrote this book? Why? Who publishes it? How is it distributed? Can I buy copies? Why is it so mysterious? What will the end result be?
    And Beatrice, cool, with her written British accent so clear in Lizzie’s head, told her to mind her lessons and more understanding would eventually come. But cool as she may seem as regards Lizzie’s strict adherence to the rules governing the lessons, she was overwhelmingly pleased that Lizzie was such an ardent student.
    The first exercise was nothing more than two paragraphs to be read aloud three times a day for thirty days.
Within each individual resides many others. Your personality is made up of an infinite number of facets, continually turning and twinkling in the ever-present Light of Life. When we take control of our lives, we design the patterns of light. We line up the personality facets to accomplish that which we were born to do.
I now claim that which is divinely mine. I claim absolute control over each fragment of my personality, to be strengthened through purposeful, conscious unity. I now will that the Divine power which motors the Universe now deed me the control over my own destiny. I now claim that I, and no other, am the architect of my future. I now command my rightful, unique place in the order of all material.
So it is, so shall it be.
    This was written with Lizzie in mind, she was sure. She’d never read anything like it before. It reminded her that she was responsible for her own emotions, attitudes and future. It mentioned God, and it seemed to suggest a spiritual way of life, both of which Lizzie approved. And when Lizzie read the passage aloud, especially the “I now claim” part, her heart pounded, and it felt to her as if it really meant something. She hoped it wasn’t wishful thinking.
    The second exercise was even stranger. She was to light