“When I did come home, I went to take off my things, then to the drawing-room, kissed them coolly enough, said, ‘How d’ye do, cousins?’ and sat down to rattle. Tried hard to shock them with all sorts of nonsense, and then carried them to see my room, and made them some coffee. They, Elinor and Sarah, knew nothing of me, and did not much admire me, I guess, that night.”night.”

“Oh, dear, those two girls!” she writes a fortnight later. “What a flood of happiness they have brought into the house. And made me behave a little too. Sarah makes me attend to my hair. Oh, dear, home is a different place since they have been here. I am so happy. All my gloom and troubles swept off like cobwebs.”

“I feel as if I mean to love Ellie most, and Sarah forces me to love her most. I love Ellie most in my mind, and Sarah most in my heart. Sarah clings to me so, leans on me. Ellie walks upright beside me, a companion, a guide, and gives me a hand. There certainly is something of the angel about Ellie, with much of the woman. You don’t connect the idea of angel with Sarah.

Sarah will do almost anything for me. I do not think she has refused me one thing since she loved me. She rode with me when no one on earth could get her to mount a horse; she went in a boat with me, though she never will enter one. Oh, she is so good, so loving to me. I wish I had her always.

And I am going to them at Dunham, my darlings.”

“Uncle Evans amused me exceedingly at lunch yesterday, giving his opinion in quite energetic style, and as if he had studied the subject, that not only I should marry, which I said I shouldn’t, but very soon.... Heaven knows who it could be.... I never saw the man I would have.”

“Hurrah! Going in for a good morning’s work at the pedigree. 9¼.

Near one! well, well! I certainly have had pedigree to my heart’s content. Been hard at work for 3½ hours till my back aches and I am properly tired. Never mind, I have learned a good deal and secured a good deal. It is very kind of Robert to trust me with his valuable pedigrees, so beautifully emblazoned.”

“He offered lunch, and then took us up to see the rooms. All shutters up, and had to be re-opened and re-shut. In an upstairs sitting-room I unluckily wanted to see a Family Bible, and said, ‘Is that the Family Bible with the names, etc.?’ ‘Yes, it is. You leave it alone—unless you want to see it.’it.’ I persisted I did and he took it down. Then out came Burke’s Gentry and alia.... I thought I should have been eaten up the way he roared at me. I asked if he hadn’t a pedigree, and he almost roared again, wanting to know what I could want better than Burke. I might have told him there were no shields, no intermarriages, etc., but I held my peace, he really frightened me. I got him to show me my dear old Mother’s room as a girl, and kissed the bed and furniture. Thought of her as a girl there, her fun and her troubles, her courting-days perhaps and the letters and thought and hopes that room had witnessed. My precious darling Mother!”

“But among the events of the old year, first and chief, my becoming friends with my darlings, my stars, and getting acquainted with the Evans and all the Norfolk folks.”

“Yesterday went with Ada to the Swedish minstrels. Very strange and beautiful.... After concert went for a drive in the pony-chaise. Just beyond the battery a carriage and pair drove into us. Coachman got down and was very civil. Everyone said it was no fault of mine; he was trying to cut in between two. I was not the least frightened.

Speaking to Ada on Thursday night revived the idea of Queen’s College. Her sister there. Wrote Friday for prospectus. Tried to speak to Daddy last night. He very impracticable, I after a while very undutiful. At last I went into hysterics^[13] which frightened him dreadfully, poor old man. I shall certainly go, I think. Michaelmas term begins 4th prox. I should very much like a year’s or even less, good work, and a few certificates.

Very good last night Ada Benson’s story of the Bishop of —— ‘Opposed as I am to the Catholic faith, opposed, as I say I am to the Catholic faith...’ on which a priest from the body of the meeting, —‘Which faith except..., etc.’”etc.’”

“Worst thing about Queen’s College is—no Sarah till Christmas,” she writes. “M. brought“M. brought me an invite to write for the Sunday School Quarterly. Sat up till 2 a.m. Friday to write story on 18th after Trinity. I wonder if I shall succeed, and, if so, how compatible with Queen’s?

Sept. 25th. All settled for Queen’s. Mrs. Williams writes very kindly.... Having rather hard work with Redknap, five lessons a week. Must try for 2nd class in Mathematics, and, if I can, for more.

Absurd panic at Dunham lest I should be a ‘governess’! Awful phantom!”

“Very delicious it is to be here. ‘Oh, if there be an Elysium on earth, it is this, it is this!’ I am inclined to say. I am as happy as a queen. Work and independence! What can be more charming? Really perfection. So delicious in the present, what will it be to look back upon?”

“Mummy says it is (my boarding-house troubles, she means) quite an experience of life. Truly not in these alone. Many, I believe, never live as much, and through as much, as I have done already, in the whole course of life.”

“I am so thoroughly happy in this way of life, hardly any other could suit me as well. So independent, yet so busy, so comfortable, yet not luxurious. Plenty, yet no superfluity. It is certainly very kind of the dear ‘old folks’ to let me have it so, and very wise. I should never, at least at present, have settled at home. I should have been ever longing for independence and work, and now I have all I want and may yet do good. Having, as Maurice would say, found my centre, other things will, I trust, grow up around it. I trust most fervently I may yet be a real comfort to my precious Mother and dear kind Father. As last year I computed my ‘worldly estate,’ as quaint old Pepys, whose diary I am reading, would say; I do it again. I have now for dress and private money £40 per year. Henceforth I shall have tutor’s money as well. From my Father I have, I think, as well as I can calculate, about £50 a term for all expenses, besides all paid when at home, as well as travelling expenses with them or anywhere (except while at College) and riding, etc. So in actual money I have about £200 a year and in money’s worth another £100. Therefore I conclude about £300 a year to be about the happy medium of wealth for a single woman. Dear generous old Father! Few would, I think, give so much in so good a way to their children. I believe as regards happiness and satisfaction never was money better, if never more kindly, spent. I must try to pay back the ‘labour of love,’ and ‘requite my parents,’ dear, dear old things! Bless them both.

I really believe as regards money I am honestly quite contented. I wish for no more. And as this is, they say, a somewhat remarkable fact, I specially note it down. Yet it sounds ludicrously tempting to reply to myself, Contented! Shame on you if you were not, I think. Yet for actual pocket money, I am horribly pinched just now,—only 9s. 9d. till next quarter,—nearly four weeks hence.”

Dearest, I have only this moment heard that you contemplate being paid for the tutorship. It would be quite beneath you, darling, and I cannot consent to it. Take the post as one of honour and usefulness, and I shall be glad, and you will be no loser, be quite sure. But to be paid for the work would be to alter the thing completely, and would lower you sadly in the eyes of almost everybody. Do not think about it, dearest, and you will rejoice greatly by and bye with all who love you best.”

“My dear Sophy,—and you are very dear to me—you have been much in my thoughts, and I have been grieved to know that you have had so much real harass, and were so tried before you settled down in your present peaceful domicile. Now all is well, I trust, and you in peace and comfort, so, remembering the Appellant from Philip drunk to Philip sober, make the application, giving me the benefit of it, and bear with me, my own child, whilst I briefly tell you what I think and hope. I heartily admire your readiness to turn your talents to good account, and employ them in a way so clearly beneficial to others, but believe me that if you take money payment, you will make a sad mistake, debase your standing, and place yourself in a position that people in general, including many relations and friends, will never as long as you live understand otherwise than as greatly to your discredit. You would be considered mean and illiberal,—tho’ I am sure you are neither the one or the other—accepting wages that belong to a class beneath you in social rank, and which (it would be said) you had no right, under any circumstances, to appropriate to yourself....”

My own darling Daddy,

I got your kind old letter this morning, for which, thanks....

Well, as to this Tutorship. I have thought about it, and about all the accompanying circumstances. If you will listen, I will try to tell you what I think. I believe I am particularly suited for teaching, my taste, and I fancy my talent, lies that way. I generally succeed pretty well in making my pupils understand what I understand myself and so far I suppose that proves my capability. Well, there are so many who make teaching their profession, who do not love it, and are not fond of it or fit for it, that I think anything that can be done to raise the standard of teaching and teachers, must be good. Well, this would be effectually done if everyone who loved the business (and was therefore necessarily to a degree fit for it) undertook it, and no others. I think this very College is doing much to raise the standard, and I fancy they are particularly anxious—the authorities, I mean—to get teachers of a somewhat superior rank in society (as generally considered). Well, justly or not, I am, I believe, supposed to be of rather higher class than the generality of teachers, and therefore specially eligible. I suppose I certainly have considerable talent for Mathematics, if for anything. It is the one thing I know best and love best. Then—when the Mathematical Tutorship is vacant,—surely I am right enough to be anxious to obtain it. I was thought capable, and chosen.

Now remember, Father dear, I am not here taking the place from anyone else, though if I were doing so, being myself the best fitted, I do not think my conscience need be troubled,—but this Tutorship has stood vacant for some months from sheer want of anyone capable to fill it.

Well, the terms of the agreement are—do this work, and receive this payment,—the payment contingent entirely on the work. The conditions are, if the Tutor has four pupils, forming a college class, she receives 5s. an hour. It is right and natural I think, I certainly do work equivalent to the payment, and have fairly earned it. Why should I not take it? You as a man, did your work and received your payment, and no one thought it any degradation, but a fair exchange. Why should the difference of my sex alter the laws of right and honour? Tom is doing on a large scale what I do on a small one,—I cannot recognize any fundamental difference in the matter. I cannot say ‘I do not want this money, I have no use for it,’ for in truth, tho’ having an ample and generous allowance, I should have plenty of use for it. Then there is the honest, and I believe, perfectly justifiable pride of earning. Did you not feel this when you received your first salary? Why should I be deprived of it? Then again you offer to give me the money if I refuse to take it from the College. But this would be a wholly false position, to get credit for generosity in refusing what I yet receive. I could not do this. In that case I must say to the Dean, not ‘I am willing to work without payment,’ but ‘My Father prefers that I should receive payment from him, not from the College,’ and I think the Dean would think us both ridiculous, or at least foolish.

If I wrote a book I should receive payment for that, and I presume even you would not object: why then now?

For mental work done in the school the reward was a prize which cost money, you thought this honourable,—why should the reward of labour at College, being money, be dishonourable?

Hitherto I have had a class of only 3, and therefore I have not been officially entitled to this salary. The Dean wished to make some arrangement for my payment last term, but I said at once,—‘The money is not of much consequence to me—I had rather, not having the official number, teach them as a friend and ex-officially,’ and so I have done. Here I think I was right, I could afford to teach them gratis, and I did so. The Dean was gratified, the pupils obliged, and I was satisfied. So it was last term. But if this term I get the official number, I do not see any reason except pride for declining the payment. My pupils would pay the College all the same, why should not the College pay me? I really do not see that I am doing anything either mean or dishonourable, and I hardly think you can think so either. I am sure the College authorities do not. I do not think the Dean would think the better of me for declining the money, which I should be glad to receive, on account of a scruple of pride. Do you honestly, Father, think any lady lowered by the mere act of receiving money? Did you think the less of Mrs. Teed because you paid her? Would you have thought better of her for refusing payment? I am sure you would not. You are too much of a gentleman to attach importance to money.

Of course the question of right or wrong, honour or dishonour, is the point. This once settled, people’s opinion is worth nothing. I should be glad that my friends had the sense to see clearly and rightly in the matter, if they have not, I regret it for their own sakes,—not for mine.

Of course I am speaking of indifferent people,—not of you or my Mother. I care very much that you should think me right.

But even taking this lower view—of opinion—I do not believe that many for whom I have any regard or esteem, would ultimately think the worse of me for accepting well-earned wages. If I took the post, and, even without accepting a salary, neglected my duty, or did it not to the utmost of my power, I should be far more contemptible.

Mary Jane Evans, I know, for one, and she is one of the proudest families of our relations, thinks me right. Miss Wodehouse, whose family is older and better than mine, not only says I am right, but showed she agreed with my opinion by her actions. She sees no meanness in earning, but in those that think it mean. When accepting Maurice’s school, she said to him, most nobly, I think, ‘If you think it better that I should work as a paid mistress, I will take any salary you please; if not, I am willing to do the work freely and for nothing.’ I think this more noble-minded than any proud refusal of money could have been.

Well, darling Father, I have written you a very long letter, but I wished to tell you honestly all I thought, and I trust you don’t think my epistle too long....

Dearest Sophy,

Your letter has given me unmixed pleasure....

About the tutorship, you write very ably, but your logic and illustrations are not sound, as I hope to show you. I am sure you are fit for, as you are fond of, teaching, and the desire to raise the standard both of teaching and teachers is good, but your receiving or not receiving wages for the work, can neither help or hinder the matter. I agree to all you say in favour of working,—it is very honourable, very right, and worthy of all praise, but what I object to is your taking money for it. It is beneath you, and you will be far happier to decline it, and let it flow into its proper channels, to fructify widely and do real good.

The question is, as you say, one of right and wrong. In my deliberate judgment it is wrong, in your position to receive pay for what you do, to say nothing of the extent to which it would damage you. The cases you cite, darling, are not to the point. I will take each of them in the order you put them and then judge for yourself. I never received a salary of any kind in my life. I was of a liberal profession—a particularly honourable branch of it—and (chiefly) lived by it. This was ‘right’ beyond all doubt. T. W. is doing the same sort of thing. He feels bound as a man, with ability to do so, to support his wife and family, and his position is a high one, which can only be filled by a first-class man of character, and yielding him nearer two than one thousand a year. The third case—Mrs. Teed’s—like the others has no analogy whatever to my dear Sophy’s—Mrs. Teed had no means. She went out in early life as a governess to earn an honourable livelihood. She did earn it well and her talents, by God’s blessing, led to her after success, enabling her to lay by something to support herself and sister in their later years.

How entirely different is my darling’s case. You want for nothing, and know that (humanly speaking) you will want for nothing. If you married tomorrow to my liking—and I don’t believe you would ever marry otherwise—I should give you a good fortune. What temptation is there for your doing that which, at best, will be misunderstood to your prejudice? I should say at all events wait a bit till you are a little older, and can form a riper judgment. My feeling is strong that you being a paid teacher would certainly damage you, in what precise degree nobody can say. Do the work—it is a good work and I rejoice in it, but don’t put a penny into your purse for doing it. Let the gold go in some other direction. This will give you a greater and more lasting satisfaction than you could derive from any money payment.

Dear Daddy,

Thanks for your letter. I do not know whether all my reasoning was logical,—probably not—but I do not think that your arguments respecting the relative position of (at least) Tom and myself, are much better than ‘distinctions without differences.’ Refine it away as you may, Tom’s position and mine are considerably analogous, though very unequal. As far as I can trace the foundation of your asserted difference it is first his being a ‘man,’ which difference, as I said before, I cannot recognize as radical,—secondly, that his position can only be filled by ‘a first-class man,’—and I think, allowing, of course, for very great disparity of knowledge, acquirements and requirements, the comparison holds, for it is not easy, as has been proved by the length of time the office has been vacant, to fill this Tutorship properly. I should say it is the one the College finds hardest to fill, and therefore it is (in its degree) as creditable a thing to hold as the mastership.

Then I cannot think that you mean to urge the superior lucrativeness of his post as any argument, for the principle must be identical in receiving one penny or ‘nearer two than one thousand a year.’ Then I cannot say that I want for nothing,—I do want the money, and am quite satisfied to earn it, quite knowing that my allowance is enough. I do not really see that I am in any degree wrong, if I am it is unconsciously and honestly.

Well, I don’t think it is of much use to argue any more—I have told you honestly what I think.... Thank you anyhow for listening to me patiently and answering me. I do not like to vex you after all this—you have been and are very good to me. You ask me to wait a little while and consider. I have considered well, and I do not believe any further thought would alter my opinion. However I will promise you for this term only (not ceding the principle) not to take any fees, but if they come (which I do not yet know) to return them as a free gift to the College. If at the end of this term I still hold my opinion, I trust you not to oppose my determination again. Remember and understand, Daddy, I do promise this simply and only because you wish it, and not because in the least degree my mind is one whit altered on the point. I trust you to meet me half way, and not be in any degree grieved if I resume my intention next term.

Dearest,

... Tom’s being a man makes all the difference, he has just taken the plain path of duty. I am very pleased with the spirit in which you write, darling, but I must be sincere, which I should not be if I told you that I had the shadow of a doubt that you ought not to be a paid teacher....

“Feb. 13th.... Like a fool I have consented to give up the fees for this term only—though I am miserably poor. I am sorry. It was foolish. It only defers the struggle.”

“You seem,” writes Cousin Ellie, “to be spending rather a jolly time of it, but still it seems to me rather queer that a lot of girls should walk about London when and where they please. I don’t think you would come to any harm, but I am sure there are many that would.”

“What glorious fun a girl might have if inclined, but you are as steady as a rock. No fear of my dear old man doing anything giddy. My dearest treasure, Goodnight.”

“When I first saw her that evening, I thought she did not look so well, but since then I think the contrary—She is much thinner, but in such good spirits, and so happy. I think she quite likes everyone to know that she has been made mathematical tutor, for it is considered a great honour.”

“As to Ellie and Sarah,” writes Mrs. Jex-Blake in one of the severe moods that had become so rare, “instead of being hurt they do not accede to all you ask, you might well be proud of their warm love. You have taken yourself out of your natural position, and you cannot understand the need for their conforming to the proprieties their Father so naturally and properly expects. Good-looking girls do not needlessly go about London without chaperons. Happily for them, their Father’s wish is sufficient to guide them. There is a respect and duty to the position, however weak and inferior you may judge a Parent to be.^[15] Well, darling, God bless and comfort you.”

“A triumph as to life!” she records in her diary. “Last Monday told Mummy of my not going to the Opera without telling her, but proclaimed my intention in the future. No interdiction. So I talked a little about it to make all my ground sure, and coming back on Tuesday found them going to Macbeth, Friday, and yesterday told Mummy as a matter of course. She acquiesced if not consented, and was glad we had so nice a party and hoped I shall not go often, so entirely removing all interdiction....

Well, as to the Theatre! I believe I must confess myself disappointed. Charles Kean as Macbeth did not satisfy me. Mrs. C. Kean very good (I suppose) as Lady Macbeth. Yet not real, as Shakespeare surely should be. After the murder of Duncan was perhaps the grandest, most awful, most real.... The scene where Macduff learns his loss more real than most. The fighting at the end ludicrous.... I thought there would be decent fencing.”

“How can this man wear a priestly robe in the Church, and subscribe to her 6th and 20th most scriptural articles? Well, indeed, might we pray for the state of the Church Militant, when within her walls are such teachers.

Yet was I right in not staying the sacrament because this sermon so stirred my indignation? ‘The unworthiness of ministers hinders not the effect of the Sacrament.’ Perhaps I was wrong. Yet I could not have stayed in a peaceful or holy mind.

To the law and to the testimony! How precious is such unanswerable decree!—so final a court of appeal!”

“Certificate examination nearly 4 hours. Out of 23 problems did 20½. So I trust I am pretty safe. I did get rather frightened as the time drew on, but really have worked hard and I trust won. Sent a telegram, ‘Success’ to Mother, though the declaration is not yet made.

July 28th. My certificate won triumphantly and marked, ‘with great credit’.”

“I have a great deal of work in College,” she confesses some time later. I take 8 classes,—English Literature, English History, Mental and Moral Philosophy, Theology, Church History, Algebra, Geometry, and German Conversation; and have 7 pupils. I am afraid it is too much altogether.”

“In face Thackeray is the image of—whom, do you think? Guess. Someone you know,—of yourself. Yes, indeed, of you, Sophy Blake. Mama and I were both struck, almost startled, by the resemblance.”

“Mrs. Thornton called my doing what I had done ‘noble’. Yes, if for His sake, but, alas, much more—altogether—for my own. Yet my loving the work is no disqualification for doing it for Him. I trust I do do good a little. Surely honest intellectual help is something, if of lower class.... I have thought—I cannot take more work, Sunday School, etc., but what I do is good in its degree; if done in His name, surely He will accept it.”

“In this year my idea of work in the cause of education has developed itself into that of a resident College of the Holy Trinity. Heaven knows if ever to be carried out. If good,—yes, doubtless,—if not, God will raise up better. Little ‘religious’ as I fear I am, I do feel this thoroughly....

Such a happy loving Goodnight to and from Daddy and Mummy. Very happy I am tonight.

“Had a long argument with Miss Wodehouse today. Two points chiefly. 1. Are evil deeds, though always pernicious to the doer, sometimes beneficial to mankind? I affirming: she denying. 2. Is it our first duty to seek our own salvation? She denying.

I cannot tell why I am so unable to argue with her. She seems to get me into a maze. Yet I think she argues honestly. I sometimes shrink from ‘sacred’ subjects with her, yet she considers all equally sacred.

‘What is truth’ indeed? Yet am I not somewhat like ‘jesting Pilate’ who ‘would not stay for an answer’?”

“I should like to see you much,” he writes, “but I feel that Sunday would be a heavy day for you here (as I don’t frequent popish mass houses or the like), so that if you could run down here on Monday evening....”

“When I think of the (at best) half teaching you have, but that I confide in our gracious covenant head, I should tremble for you when I am gone. I have no doubt at all that Maurice is a most amiable man, but I believe that to this hour he has never come clear out of Unitarianism, and therefore does not see distinctly, nor, of course, teach scripturally, any one of those fundamental Christian truths (all connected together) original sin, Christ’s vicarious work atoning for sin and fulfiling the law, justification by faith, and salvation by grace. Read, darling, ...”

My dear Sophy,

I left Brighton on Friday with something of a heavy heart. I saw I had grieved you where I had really no intention of doing so: that was painful to me and I must regret it. I express to you my strong regrets. But oh! tenthousandfold deeper was the sad conviction forced upon me, that the advance you have made,—shall I vex you if I say honestly and openly,—Romewards, since I last saw you was very great. I believe you are as yet unconscious of your own tendency. I told you so at Lyng. But in honesty I must tell you, my dear Sophy, I tremble for you. It is such awfully slippery ground. It is such a pleasant accommodation of religion to our fallen nature. It so feeds our impulsiveness and fortifies our natural religionism.

Will you forgive me if, with a cousin’s, I hope more than that, anxious love I beseech you to ‘consider your ways,’ and bring your soul before God in this matter. Pray don’t starve your soul on gilded husks while bread lies at your feet in your Father’s house.

I know more than one amiable creature who began as you have done, and has landed in Rome....

Dear Sophy, don’t trust your head, much less your heart, much less any fallen man or imperfect church under the sun. Trust Jesus, Jesus only, Jesus wholly, Jesus exclusively.

I trust this note will not make you wrath against me.... Be sure of one thing, I banter no more, where feeling is evidently so deep. Henceforth I will try and pray fervently for your poor soul’s conversion to God.”

My dear ...

If I do not say that you have written me a most ridiculous letter, it will be more from respect to its motive than its matter,—or purport. I know people can work themselves up to any exaggerated view of things, yet I can hardly believe that, if you have half the sense people say you have, you can on sober reconsideration really believe that there was the smallest ground for your tirade in my objection to hear a Church—a house of God at least, spoken of and criticised as if it were a right thing to visit it as you would a theatre, and remain a looker-on while others were worshipping. ‘Seeking occasion against’ men was not the characteristic of the followers of the Jesus whose name you reiterate so often. I believe this was the whole feeling with which I spoke, exactly as I should have done if it had been a Baptist Meeting-house you were commenting on,—as I believe you would not have commented on a Baptist Meeting-house.

You may, if you please, take my word for it that I am not going over to Rome, among whose partisans, however, I must say that I have never—no, nor I think from any other denomination under the sun—heard the same virulent abuse of those who have at least ‘one Lord,’ if not ‘one faith and one baptism,’—that I have from the Puritan portion of our own Church: and I am sure no God and no Church was ever served by the one or the other....

What I have written is probably ill conceived and worse expressed. Excuse all such deficiencies. If I have myself fallen into the error I protest against, I need more than excuse—forgiveness. I have not meant to be violent or uncourteous, but where I have felt strongly, I doubt not I have so spoken.

For your cousinly care and affection I thank you heartily, as I am ever

“I do not think I ever did so good a Lord’s Day work in my life,—if, that is, it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath Day,—to save life, not to kill,—or let kill. I think I am very like a life-boat,—valueless in itself, yet useful enough in saving better things alive. That, indeed, its whole use and work.”

“I am sure all that driving and running about with me on Thursday made your eye and headache much worse,” writes Cousin Sarah, “but you are such a dear kind old pet,—would half kill yourself for anybody.”

“I feel I ought not to trouble you, occupied as you are, but, whenever I have asked you for anything, your kindness and sympathy have been so readily given that I always think of you when I hear of any wants.”

“Mama sends her very best love,” writes Miss M. J. Evans, “and Papa too. Oddly enough, both like you. How can they?—such a trumpery heartless girl!”

“I would not and could not speak” (after parting from you), writes Ellie. “I wish I was not such a silly fool, but I could not help it and never can, if I have to leave you.... I wonder if you have wished for me, if it was only to scold and fight with; but what I wish most of all is that you would give up fighting. I would do anything for you if I could only make even a slight alteration.... I do with all my heart wish that you would try to keep in that temper of yours.”

“I wish to tell you (I could not before, but think it right now) that this ... will be more of a personal advantage and enjoyment to me than anything else in the world....

With all my heart I rejoice to acknowledge an immense obligation to you for your love to me at all times and for this particular way of showing it, but not that sort of obligation which shall in any way affect my words and doings with you for the future.”

“Jan. 26th. 1860. Just had a lesson in book-keeping from Miss [Octavia] Hill. Clever, pleasant girl,—much nicer than I thought. Dined with me. What and how the deuce am I to pay her? £1 1s., I suppose. Dear old Patty Heaton! How fond I am of her, and what wonderfully good friends we are!”

“Jan. 27th. I am sure I am a good companion for her (Miss Heaton) if only in amusing her. I think laughing does her a deal of good—hearty fun. I rejoice in her exceedingly. And I hope for another sort of friend, or ally at least, in Miss Hill who came and taught me book-keeping yesterday evening. Nice, sensible, clever. Very good worker, I expect.”

“I am always thinking of you both, and longing to have you home again that you may really know all our doings and lives. Mine lately you would assuredly consider rather of the dissipated kind. I have been giving some book-keeping lessons to Miss J.-B. She is a bright, spirited, brave, generous young lady, living alone, in true bachelor style. It took me three nights to teach her, and she begged me to come to dinner each time. She has a friend who is killing herself by hard work to support her younger sisters. I gather she would gladly give her friend help, for she speaks most sadly of the ‘modern fallacy’ ‘that the money must be earned.’ She thinks it might be given when people are dear friends: she says they’ve given the most precious thing and what difference can a little money make?”^[16]

“I wonder whether you will think me very impertinent if I say that I wonder you don’t see that, in turning away from so many important thoughts with a half joke, you are refusing God’s means of grace as much as in staying away from ordained services. It is no good my writing sermons, however.... I trust to live to see some one or some sorrow do for you what I cannot, to see such a peace as ‘passeth all understanding’ come over you, to see the thankful, perfect dedication of all your powers to His service for His sake....

I too long for a nice quiet talk with you. I enjoy it so, and your magnificent energy does me such good.”

S. J.-B. (hotly), “I never heard the game laws attacked!”

O. H. (calmly), “I never heard them defended!”

“My dear loving strong child,” writes S. J.-B. in her diary after this visit. “I do love and reverence her.... Had a loving solemn letter (not altogether pleasing to me) on my telling her we had had a ‘row’ [at home]. Told her by return ‘Hang you,’ and bade her remember she was neither nurse nor parson.

Dear, dear child, though. Mother calls it beautiful letter.”

“You dear old thing, I wish I had you here to give you a good rest and rousing, and refreshing. I am as merry as a grig.... Miss J.-B. and I are always doing things together—great companions I am with her. You know she’s teaching me Euclid. We went to see Holman Hunt’s picture,...”^[17]

“May 17th, Whitsunday. A most delicious day at Hurst with Ruth^[18] and Octa. Went down together second-class by 6 train.... Told Octa about Wales,—sitting in her room on the table, my heart beating like a hammer. That Carry wanted to go to Wales and I too, and most convenient about beginning of July, so ... ‘Put off my visit?’ said Octa. ‘No, I was going to say (slowly) if you wish to see anything of me, you must come too, I think, and not put off the mountains till heaven.’ She sunk her head on my lap silently, raised it in tears, and then such a kiss!”

Darling Mother,

We have decided rather in a hurry as there are to be no prizes, ... to give a treat to all, which, however, Mr. Jones specially stipulates is not to be a school treat.... It is just coming off today. I ordered 60 lbs. of dough and etcs. from Catherine Owen,—rather less rich than last year (that is, fewer eggs and less butter). It makes 88 lbs. altogether. But it was only settled on Monday, and as this is Thursday I am half afraid all may not know. But we have tried hard to send scouts everywhere....

Please tell me as early as possible where you will be each day of the week beginning Sunday, August the 12th. Now don’t let Tom just prevent your remembering or caring^[19] to meet your little one. I do long to see you so....

Weymouth St. July 30th. All over, darling, now, and such a happy time without a single blot I never remember in my life. Every thing has been better than any anticipation of it. We have done everything we wanted to do. We have been everywhere and have had no mischance, no annoyance of any kind. Octa looks five years younger, and as bright as a sunbeam. And I am in so thoroughly happy a state of mind as hardly to know myself. I really almost think I should be good-tempered now. We came home by Llangollen on Saturday, 40 miles coach and 194 miles rail. Not a bad journey for one day. We went up that morning to your high mound. The view was glorious. I took poor old Ellen Jones some squills for her cough, but she looks very ill indeed. She sent so very much love to you, and wished she had something to send you.

The treat came off excellently on Thursday. It was grand fun to see Octa playing with the children. At Hunt the Slipper once, she, pretending she had the shoe, held up her boot toe, saying, ‘See, here it is,’ or something like it. Grace Owen, who was seeking, seized hold of it as quick as light, crying ‘Let me have it then,’ pulled away, and capsized Octa entirely amid roars of laughing. Octa sprang up and chased her round and round the field till she caught and tickled her. It was quite one of the bits of fun of the evening.... The only contretemps was that poor little Hannah fell down and sprained her arm. However, Miss Hill’s surgical powers came in grandly, and I do not suppose Hannah is any the worse except for a few days inaction. Well, how strange it is to find this all over, and probably never to return. I cannot say I am glad our tour is over, for I do believe I was never so happy for so long in my whole life, but neither can I say I am sorry to see dear old London again,—I am sure I could come back to no other place—as a place—with near so much pleasure....

Just fancy Octavia’s energy,—after that tremendous journey not reaching home till 10.30, she was off to Lincoln’s Inn at 7 a.m. the next morning for the early communion, and went again, and I with her in the afternoon. Her Mother and sister were so delighted with her account of all her doings, and a glorious one she gave certainly. I had tea with them last night. Goodbye, my darling, for the present. Not so very long now, I trust, before we meet.

Aug. 1st. Although this has been in a ‘Milan’ envelope all this time, I suppose I must now send it to Chamounix, as I foolishly forgot to post it yesterday.

Today quite forgotten to order any dinner, so just bought some cheese and strawberries.

Tell Carry John Davis has sent her a letter to complain of me, which was forwarded to me, and which I have answered. Goodbye darling.

“London feels strangely desolate, the lamps looked as they used to look, pitiless and unending as I walked home last night, and knew I could not go to you.... I don’t the least suppose you’ll go to Florence or see my sisters, but, if you should, pray take off your ‘spikes’ and remember ... how much they love England, and everyone who is a friend of ours. I look forward to bright long days in which I shall learn always more about you, and watch with unending and unfathomable love and sympathy your upward growth, and we may look back together on our lives, as I do often on my own, and wonder how I could know and see so little, and wonder more how, knowing so little, I should be led continually to deeper truth.”

“Sept. 9th. Sunday [1860]. A plan on foot of my taking part of a house with the Hills and having Alice for a servant. That would be very jolly. But rents high about here,—least £120.”

“Dearest Child,

You cannot surely mean to take a house and let lodgings in direct opposition to your dear Mother and me. It would be quite disgraceful and we never can consent to it. I will not believe, my dear child, with all our love for you, that you will so directly disobey us, or that Miss Hill, knowing our feelings on the subject, can be a party to it.

When you spoke of the other house, you said a lawyer was to look over the lease, and take care of the Hills, and I firmly believed, till the last few days, that you were to hire rooms. I had no more idea of your becoming a lodging-house keeper than of your keeping a shop. You cannot suppose that I would assist Miss Hill in such an exceedingly blameable transaction. I would with real pleasure assist her in all possible ways ... but no Father or Mother who love their daughter, in your position, could consent to her joining in it. I trust, dearest child, you will give up all idea of such a thing, which, once done, you would repent as long as you lived.”

“My darling Child,

Thanks for all the trouble that you are taking about the houses, I am quite ashamed it should all fall to your share. Is Harley Street house quite out of the question? I received a letter from Mama, earnestly desiring that we should keep near the park; she would not at all like Bentinck Street. Don’t weary yourself with searching. I certainly will return on Thursday (probably much before) then we will look together again.... If it would secure the Harley Street house by all means let us pay all the taxes whatever they may be. I am writing in the dark. Goodbye, my own darling treasure.

Mama has an affection now for Harley Street.”

“It is all your own choice and doubtless right, but it sometimes grieves me to think how many discomforts you have, and how many indulgences I have—only it is not my doing that you have them not. I wish I did not think of you as worn and fagged. Do assure me that you go to bed as early as you can and get good rest.”

“Oh, child, your letters are such a delight, but I miss you so dreadfully. I wander like a lost thing about the house and long for you intensely. Every place seems so desolate. Every witness of your thought and active care of and for me contrasted vividly with Z’s odd procrastination till I almost felt unjust and unkind. And yet I ought to glory in your kindness and goodness, and in all that mighty and glorious energy that will help so many people in this sad world, if it is spared to us. Your room, the fire, the thought of all you had told me to provide for myself, fills my eyes with tears. I mean to spend a very quiet and happy Sunday.” And again, later,—“Do you know I get on very much more easily with strangers than I used, all of which I owe to you. It is a great satisfaction to me: it pleases one’s friends to have their friends like one.”

“I hold myself prepared to come when it seems right, sure to be given strength to do my duty, but certainly not longing for anything that will bring me again into a world of contention. I can’t bear to think how pained you would be if you could know the strength of this feeling, for I know you would feel it a failure of love. I tell you all this because I am sure you will feel it in my letters, because I am sure such a cloud hurts less when frankly confessed, because I am sure such a friendship as yours and mine need not fear it, remaining untouched and immoveable, based on what can neither change nor know fear.... All my life long this dread and misery about even the slightest contention or estrangement has taken the form of misery, continually saying in itself, ‘I cannot bear it.’ Since physical strength has left me so far this wretched dread has increased tenfold....

How delightfully kind and good you are to everybody. I can fancy I see you, brightly kind, good and energetic, going about among all the people, entertaining monitors, inviting my sisters to tea, giving club dinners, learning about examinations, arranging the play, talking to Miss Boucherett, delighting to plan work and holiday for them all.... When I have thought, as I often have, that it is probable that I may never have strength to work any more, you cannot think how I have clung to the thought of your ever ready and powerful help and care.”

“Oh, Sophy, how splendidly you and your Mother did act those last days that now seem so far away.... When I see how deep your forethought was, so loving as to have remembered the very slightest things that might be the least trouble to us when you were no longer near to take care of us, one feels as if an angel had (may I not say still is taking) care of us.”

“Bankrupt?” she asks herself. “No, by God’s grace, no! No personal trouble, no trouble of any kind, can wreck a life in His charge. Still His,—that the strong, the enduring thought.

From this very threshold of pain, whatever be its present issue, shall go forth an earnest patient life,—to continue Christ’s faithful soldier and servant to my life’s end.

Yes, I,—Christ’s soldier! Yes, earnestly, heartily, entirely, though speculatively this Christ I know not,—though my mind asks in all uncertainty What and Who?...

Dogmas are one thing; life is another.

Doing is clear; ‘doing the will,’—‘knowing the doctrine’ shall come later. Not believing though. I mean understanding,—receiving with reason and mind.”

“Dec. 13th. Sunday. 11.45 p.m. Who could have believed what a happy holy evening has succeeded to all the pain, storm and whirlwind of the morning?

Dr. Smith’s death.^[22] The loss of Octavia’s day,—her visit of one hour; the utter stupor of misery. Then, with all the pain, the perfect feeling of content and assurance of Rightness in things. Then this happy evening, lifting me altogether out of myself and my pain into the trials and struggles and efforts and interests of Lucy and Emily,—and, thank God, the power of helping both. Now this calm perfect peace, which sends me to bed ‘resting.’... Oh, God is most merciful, most bountiful. ‘Like as a Father pitieth his children’.”

Don’t chide me for writing late, Mother. I must speak to you. If I could give you an idea of the peaceful, happy evening I have had,—sending me to bed with a heart full of love and joy and thankfulness. No, nothing has changed in outer things. I have no other news. But perfect peace has come. I can hardly tell you how happy I am, Mother.

I have had such a happy, holy evening with two or three of the girls.... And God seemed to give me such wonderful power to help them, and I believe He has helped them. And in all this—I know not how, but I wake up at their departing ... to find that somehow God has rolled away my burden utterly.

I had forgotten it and myself altogether, and now I can find neither. I can hardly believe in the pain and misery of the morning, it seems a dim, far-off memory.

Is it not wonderful, Mother? Goodnight, my own darling.

I do not know when I could so fully and entirely say, ‘I will lay me down in peace and sleep, for Thou, Lord, only makest me to dwell in safety.’safety.’”

“—passed other quiet wayfarers, just as heavily weighted. How gentle it ought to make one,—to see how utterly ignorant one may be of sorrow at one’s elbow,—how one can only be generally tender to people, if one would escape striking down an already tottering neighbour because one does not and cannot know his needs.

It is only God who sees which is the bruised reed, and cherishes that specially,—or can do so.

I am thinking how near 4 o’clock is coming. It may bring me a kiss and a word from my darling. I am sure tonight’s post will at any rate.

Well, dear, I have you always and forever, and with you only I could never be desolate. And I have her too,—though she doesn’t know it now.

“4.30 p.m. Thanks, many, darling, for your loving little note. You will know before this that the cloud is not dispersing in the way you mean,—that it has only more fully and certainly overspread the sky. Yet there is—and will be more and more, please God,—a light in it too.”

My own darling Mother,

Thanks so many for the loving little scrap of letter which I knew would come to comfort me.

The sympathy is always delicious, but the active need for it is utterly gone. You will have got my last night’s letter, so Mother will not go to bed with a sad heart for her baby.

Yesterday I was wondering how it should be possible that I should ever live out the next three days till I got home to you. Now every sort of trouble seems to have fled utterly away. I never knew before the meaning of the words, ‘the peace that passeth understanding’....

I every now and then wake up with a kind of start of wonder to find such a sunny smile of heart gladness all over my face. And people see it too. It would be very odd if they didn’t when the whole world is changed to me. It is the most wonderful separation of the inner from the outer world that I ever knew. I suppose nothing is changed in the physical world, but everything seems for me bright and golden,—as in my Welsh tour with Octavia (I can speak of it and her now with perfect quiet peace), as in those days at Hurst.

Last night I thought it most glorious, but too delicious to last; but it seems now the atmosphere of life, as if nothing can touch or shake it....

Mother, a grand solemn wonder comes with it all, whether it is that when we have actually and literally given up every will and wish to God,—have rested utterly and entirely on Him with perfect trust—whether then pain loses its power, and only blessing, even now, can come.

... if so, what a glorious future one sees for all the sorrowful here,—for all the tried and suffering. ‘For all the wanderers the home is one’. The pain only till it has brought the bliss; the All-loving Father that cannot wound but to heal.

Now my spirit is so perfectly at rest, all my strength seems to have come back to me like Samson. I feel as if Edinbro’ or anything else was nothing to me. ‘He hath set my heart at liberty’,—that is the very truth. Mother, how naturally in every depth of sorrow or joy one turns to those words about which verbally we quarrel,—not really or deeply, Mother.

“Dec. 16th Monday. ‘For as soon as ever thou hast delivered thyself to God with thy whole heart, and seekest not this or that for thine own pleasure or will, but fixest thyself wholly upon Him, thou shalt find thyself united and at peace.’

“Dec. 22nd. Sunday, 11 p.m. The last thread actually broken,—the parting over.

Left London on Thursday evening by the 8 p.m....

Well, it is all in hands that cannot err,—speculative sceptic as I may be, practically my trust is as firm as the rock on which it rests. My Father doth do all things well,—and even makes me feel it,—even now. And surely, to take a lower ground, I have been an inapt pupil if the lessons of the last few months have not taught me the utter impossibility of calculating the possibilities of the future.

Should I have believed from man or angel on Tuesday the first the events of Thursday the last of October?

But we don’t want low ground. He is the rock,—His work is perfect.

And He will care for my child.”

“Dec. 29th Sunday. Tonight the bitterness seemed doubled in finding ‘my teachers removed out of my sight.’ I just feeling my way to truth,—saved by her from so much doubt and possible infidelity. Well, God will teach me, will He not, Himself,—so Mother said. I cannot (or feel as if I could not: cannot is not a word for ‘Christ’s soldier and servant’, is it?) put it all away. I seem so physically weak and rotten, so unable to exert will and force myself to be quiet.

But I have found something to do. I behave infamously to the dear old man. Well! I mean to throw my whole being into being a good child at home. I won’t be rude and bad to him!

Now record this vow for a week,—don’t be superstitious, Jack; say ‘God helping me’ and go on,—forget yourself. Just do this piece of work,—and wait.

So be it.

What was the ‘chief evil’ to which the suffering must be directed to be sufficient?

‘Selfishness,’ said I.

Truly, Jack. And what is it but intolerable selfishness,—this brooding over a ‘bootless bene’,—this expecting sympathy and all sorts of kindness and excuse from my Mother and the rest, and talking about nerves and fiddle-de-dees,—instead of forgetting myself and seeing to my work and to other people.

Well, God helping me, now for a new leaf—of strength and resolve instead of whining self-pity.”

Dear Lucy,

... My Modern History was all right, thank you,—I forgot you had it. By the bye, your handwriting seems to me to have ‘suffered an improvement’—I must congratulate you.

I am very glad you think I have helped you, dear child,—my life has been a very pleasant one in London,—its memory will be pleasanter still if it has been too not quite useless to some of the people who have helped to make it so. I could not easily count the people who have helped me,—some directly,—some merely ‘by living.’ It is a glorious thing, is it not, to be a link in that chain of help which encircles the world,—to pass on to another what one has given us,—feeling how all our broken bits of help and gift are gathered up in the perfection of the Great Giver and ‘Father of Lights.’

I do heartily hope that you will go back to Queen’s just to take and hold your place in that chain. Only do quite resolutely take your part for the highest and noblest,—remember ‘the soldier and servant’, and remember how very far we are from helping when we acquiesce in any wrong doing,—in any low standard of right and wrong, even by silence.

I do not think it would be easy to over-estimate the importance of a high pure tone among the leading girls at such a place as Queen’s,—perhaps such as you and L. hardly know what a power lies in your hands, for the very life of the College,—and mayn’t we look higher than that, and say for our Master’s work?

And after all that is the true and simple way of looking at it,—for consequences we can’t calculate,—but we always can know right from wrong, and the rest is not our affair.

Well, dear child, God bless and guide you,—that is the true help.”

“Dec. 31st. 1861. The last day of the year! Now to ‘take stock’. I have just finished, and balanced exactly my money matters (within a deficit of 2s. 8d. with which I left London). Now for the moral and historical. See the last volume for the beginning of the year. How well I remember the last day last year. Does she? How we did and sorted accounts till the chimes,—and then leant together out of the window in our new house fresh with plans and hopes, saying so hopefully,

And now truly almost,

It is almost dreadful to look back and see how this book opens with a jest. How full of joke and spirit all seems! The ‘deep waters’ have come this year as never before. But it is a strange wild comfort to find in myself so much capacity for suffering. I had always despised myself as a weak shallow nature, to leave others to suffer and escape with a laugh....

(Wrote one last letter to Frid^[23] tonight—for her birthday tomorrow. Weak? I think not.)

Well, now to ‘take stock’:

The opening of the year, bright, clear, hopeful. Octavia’s visit to the north, but that no real break. Our delight in our new house,—its quiet and peace. Some disappointment is not letting, but that very endurable. No bar to happiness....

Then the return of Frid and Florence. My unwilling acquaintance ripening gradually into love for Frid, called forth perhaps first by her great love for me.

Then our glorious Whitsuntide at Hurst,—Octa and I. The few days (Thursday to Tuesday) pure unmixed heart sunshine. Purer and deeper if possible than that of Wales.

Then the strange double summons on May 21st., she to Mary Harris, I to the O’Briens. Coming like a thunderbolt on our week, but accepted by both obediently and willingly. Together to London. Then my mission to Tufnell Park. The hurried tea, the night mail, the parting hand pressure as the train moved, ‘in the sure and certain hope’—is it blasphemous so to use the words? I think not. There was a glorious churchlike solemnity always on our love. Well!—then the five months’ parting,—hard it seemed then, but painless—heaven—to what came after.

Perhaps I am not yet meant to see the ‘why’ of all that followed.... We seemed so helpful heavenwards to each other. Never seemed our love truer, deeper, purer,—I know though now that mine could be all three.

Yet with all this wondering, I do and have felt most solemnly.solemnly. Surely it is best. ‘We shall see in Heaven why it could not be otherwise.’

At least, Octavia, you have never had (in me at least) so true and deep and leal a friend as now,—and yet quieter and so stronger.

And for her—God have her in His holy keeping!

I feel some work has been done when I can say as deeply, truly as now that no earthly blessing could seem to me (except relating to my Mother) comparable to her restoration to me (for every feeling of hurt or wound or injury seems merged in deep earnest love ‘beyond words’) yet I am ready, and God helping me able to go through the world—darkened and lightless as it seemed a few weeks ago—and feel it yet my Father’s own world, ‘very good’ yet: ready in it manfully and cheerfully to take up my burden, and again and forever as ‘Christ’s faithful soldier and servant’ to fight manfully till my life’s end—so help me God!”

“This brought down an awful storm of wonder, reasoning, etc., till at length I got off to bed so tired.”

“And now to turn to the outer facts of life.

Here I am, my London College life over, with all its pleasures, all its cares, all its responsibilities, all its glorious delight at times.

Ten terms have I kept,—ten passed since the beginning of that second volume of mine! How sorrowfully meagre seems the record. Yet ‘the world could scarcely contain’ what might have been written.

My rooms in Nottingham Place given up (first and second floors let to Vs.). The world before me. Alice only bound to me. My life in Scotland to begin whenever rested. Wants sufficient resolution to make that ‘when.’ Yet I expect very needful.

I suppose the shock to my whole being of the last three months could not be easily reckoned. Two months today since I left N.P.!

Again the burden has been lightened since my resolve (how inadequately worked out!) of Sunday night. Not only Watch, but Work and wait!...

By-the-bye, Frid’s lovely Christmas gift,—Christ on the Cross. The Child Christ and verses (her’s?)

Amen.”

“Then went in to the Arithmetic class. Found the first division doing Proportion! And, oh, such teaching! First question:—‘If cloth is bought for 2s. a yard, at what price must it be sold to gain 25 per cent?’ ... exhortation following in this style,—‘Now say and exameen carefully’ (broad Scotch) ‘I think ye’ll find it need consideration, etc.’ ‘It’s not quite a deerect question, etc., etc.’ ‘Now what will be the third terrm?’ ‘Stand up the ladies who can answer. What, Miss McCreechie! I think ye’ll hardly tell me, but ye can try, etc., etc.’ And, sure enough, long took this abstruse question to solve.

And such a lesson! No explaining,—some scolding, some shouting,—a good deal of cry and small wool. Then he came to me. ‘Can ye do proportion?’ ‘Yes (!) I want to do Algebra.’ ‘Ay,—but that’ll be Friday. But do ye know Fractions?’ I intimated an idea that I did. He didn’t seem at all to believe it,—‘did I understand them?’ I felt rather absurd and hypocritical, and again said I did rather decidedly. However not a bit would he believe me,—gave me (as a severe test, I suppose) ¾ x ? to do and explain. Well,—did it! ‘But why?’ I am sure I shall always hereafter have pity on unfortunate examinees pounced upon. The whole thing seemed so absurd,—I was so annoyed,annoyed,—it seemed so silly standing up by that imp of a Sandy with a slate,—that I very nearly failed to give any rational explanation. However I did somewhat, and he had rather grudgingly to grant, ‘Ay, I see ye know it.’ Then, when I asked him about the Algebra, it seemed he had none but quite beginners (don’t I pity them?) and ‘it wasn’t his subject’! in fact, clearly enough he didn’t know as much as I did. Amazed at my astounding erudition, ‘Where had I learned?’ ‘Oh, in England.’ ‘Ay?’ (very surprised) ‘the English gairls generally come very bad at Arithmetic,—we’ve one just now doesn’t know her tables.’ I laughed out. ‘Well, you mustn’t take her for a specimen.’ He seemed to think that the national average! ‘Ay, but most we’ve had are very bad at it,’ very resolutely. He must be a good judge by the specimen I saw. Well, he kept hovering round me as a sort of strange animal, and told me how the girls changed every year, and how he went through from the First Rules to Decimals as the ne plus ultra.”

“Mathematics not much with S. In answer to Miss de Dreux told the truth. They so nice sensible and honest,—teachers born, ‘without respect of persons’. Mr. Begbie glad to hear truth,—promises me a better far tomorrow. Mr. Weisse a good teacher,—right good. German less formidable than I expected.”

“There never was such a book as Jane Eyre—of its kind. Talk of ‘finding’—that finds me through and through continually. How people dare speak ill of such a book,—I suppose they simply can’t understand it. Its grand steadfastness and earnestness and purity, is something glorious. I read and re-read it as I never could another novel, and how it helps one!”

“Aids to Faith put into my trunk by that dear old Mother who in her weaker moment entertains an uncomfortable kind of desire to proselytize me,—and yet can’t be quite dissatisfied.

Immensely interested in Aids to Faith. Read Cook’s Ideology and Subscription, Brown’s ‘Inspiration,’ and am reading Mansel’s ‘Miracles.’ The last gives me a glimpse of light and clearness I never had before. As far as I have read (and remember Essays and Reviews, which I must get) I think this side has it. As to Ideology I don’t understand it and don’t like to take the whole account from the adverse side (though there seems great fairness and scholarlike equity). As to subscription, I think Cook has it,—I never could heartily sympathize with the other position, though I know it is held by quite good and honest men. I suppose one real question might arise,—Who is to determine the real sense of the Church? For doubtless very grave doubts are found among equally good men.

As to ‘Inspiration,’ though I like the Essay, I hold more with E. and R. a good deal. Most of all with Coleridge as quoted in Aids,—‘what finds me’ is its own witness, but why impose upon me what is not, because bound in the same covers?”

“The prayers are what I can’t manage in the Scottish kirk. ‘Other people’s’ need too much effort to approve or disapprove to leave your spirit free to pray. I find more and more the value and rest of the Liturgy.... Saw Unitarian chapel. Shall I go? Don’t expect to be in near such real sympathy as with Church of England. Octa always said so. Bless her!”

“Much helpful sympathy and no horror of my questionings (how helpful that is!) but not much direct word gain. I suppose it must be lived out. He clearly does hold the Trinity, yet not, I think, as some do. Certainly not the vicarious Atonement. He uses nearly Maurice’s words,—‘To present humanity perfect to God.’ (I think they are Maurice’s.) He believes Christ the man to have been God, but at first in His manhood unconscious of His Godhead. This seems to me very questionable and not clear. However, as I said—and he agreed thoroughly—not being a question of spirit but of history, it is not vital to me now, and living and desiring to know, we shall know.

He again spoke strongly of not talking to people who can’t understand.”

“A mouse caught at last. Odd, how it annoys me! ‘Shall I drown it, ma’am?’ ‘Oh, let it eat its cheese first!’ How Octa’d laugh! Faugh!—poor little thing, how it struggled for its life,—and how my heart beat! It was some courage to resolve it shouldn’t suffer longer than need be.”

“Now for friends. I think I really may put that word to Dora Burn Murdoch and Margaret Orr, short as the time seems in days since I have known them; but then days sometimes go for weeks and they have both been so kind to me. ‘I was a stranger and they took me in.’ [Dora’s] charity for others is something quite beautiful, her unconsciousness of other people’s inferiority to her,—her width of thought, and power of understanding those differing most widely from herself—most admirable. You never hear her by any chance say a harsh thing, a spiteful thing or a narrow thing,—neither do you ever hear a weak one.”

“I expect,” she says, “I quoted in commas the very words you wrote about the Atonement. The rest was, of course, my able and learned commentary. I think I did take your words in your sense, though I couldn’t help their expanding—you will perhaps say, narrowing,—in my view. He will guide us both into all truth.”

May 6th. “I don’t think I ever had a letter from you that I did not enjoy and enter into sympathy with, because I never will open them till I can enjoy them. Sometimes one has come at dinner time with others when Mr. O. has been here, and he has said,—‘Why don’t you open the brown letter? I know it interests you.’ I answer, ‘Just because I can’t fully enjoy it’.”

May 7th. “You have a glorious field of usefulness before you. No one can guess to what extent you may be permitted to be useful to the generations to come. Plod on; expect rough waves that seem ready to overwhelm your best energies, and almost quench life; but One sitteth above the water floods Who will always bear you through.”

May 8th. “My heart’s desire is that you should know the truth of God, whether it be what I believe or not, and that I should know it too.” (Previously she had written,—“I was thinking today how surely God would guide you into all truth,—this text confirming the thought,—‘If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God.’)

I think my cup of blessing would be fuller than I could bear did we two fully agree on that which must be all-absorbing and by far the most interesting of subjects. Though C. and I essentially agree, we cannot communicate with each other—our natures are so different. I don’t think I do her justice or fully understand her.”

May 9th. “We“We do well to struggle against that weary powerless feeling, because, given way to, it might overcome all power of energy, but I quite believe it is sometimes part of appointed discipline, and it is no use to quarrel with ourselves for it. Still I do incline to believe in your present case it proceeds from exhaustion of the nervous system, occasioned by a shock struggled against with all your power. You will be better when Dora is back, and you get real interchange of thought and loving sympathy. God bless her for giving it to my darling. Try not to allow yourself to think on getting up,—‘How long will it be before I lie down to rest again?’ Remember you desire to give yourself to service, though not so active just now, for others. Remember as a help how many bless you for having sped them on their way. Your want just now is someone to be helped and braced for usefulness.”

May 10th. “Own darling, you write me such charming long letters, you quite spoil me.... I suppose your work in Edinburgh has been very intense while it lasted, and proportionately exhausting,—and then you don’t, as a schoolboy does, get any reaction the other way. You have no one to play with,—no positive recreation. I always think the games and perpetual ‘outings’ in public schools such a fine arrangement; and then an Oxonian or Cantab. has his boat or his ride, My darling has positively nothing. Don’t little one overwork herself: such concentration of thought as you give in one hour is very exhausting.”

May 11th. “I fear it is impossible for me fully to appreciate your child, and, even had you done differently, I question whether she and I ever would have got at each other, but I quite believe in the noble-heartedness you speak of. I would with avidity seize any opening she offered, but I fear she will not make it. In the present distortion of vision, she is more likely to suppose I am inclined to alienate you from her. Had your’s been a common friendship, I should have thought it possible that ‘Art might conceal too much,’ but she knows you in spite of all your faults and independently of them,—and surely the wine was a messenger of love. You dared not have sent it had you not been bound up in her.”

“How very remarkable and interesting is Mr. Pulsford’s statement about valued friends apparently lost for a time. I had no idea that your’s was a case that ever occurred,—I mean of increased love—a stronger, deeper, truer love: it is really very grand.” “I fancy I like ‘Sorrow’ better than ‘Fidelis,’^[24] but the latter is wonderfully your picture. I can scarcely grasp it, though I wonder and admire.”

May 13th. “I have nearly finished Jane Eyre, and like much of it exceedingly. What I object to is the personal handling she allows ... and, grand as her conduct is, she marries a man of very exceptionable conduct, and who to the last had a relish for swearing.... I think she makes St. John very unfairly disagreeable,—his icy coldness very unnatural....”

May 15th. “Well, darling, you and I must wait to talk it out about Jane Eyre. I shall never be able to write it out. It appears to me you have built up a wall to knock down.^[25] I don’t at all ask a different code of morals for men and women. But I do wish a woman to be refined and pure, not because I am conventional, but because I think it essential to self-respect and dignity.... I don’t believe high-toned governesses fall in love with their employers.... I think it very cruel upon the race of governesses to put it into people’s heads they are to fall in love. I always, since I took a district in 1836 felt the tenderest, most motherly pity for any misguided girl.... I certainly never did or will read impure things in books or newspapers. I consider familiarity with impurity rubs the bloom off the plum, which never can be restored. Minds differ, some almost enjoy to read queer things. Impurity does not seem to me to find any response in you: you can come in contact and it runs off like quicksilver—leaves no print. I don’t think that is common.”

“A letter from Elinor. She talks of enjoying your letters so much.... I am very glad Plumptre has sent you a testimonial you like. I fully expected he would send (if asked) a very handsome one.

The world has many kind hearts, has it not?—none like my own child.”

“Darling Mother,—I know you care to hear all your child’s thoughts and hopes and feelings,—I know you will not condemn for conceit and egotism what might seem so to other people.

I want to talk to you,—I feel so sure you want to hear. I want to tell you what a glorious Strength and Power has come out of all the sharp pain,—how I feel that I am a better person, a stronger and more real one, than I ever was before....

Some one says that it is ‘not pain undergone but pain accepted’ that bears fruit an hundredfold. You know the acceptance has not been easy,—you know sometimes the flints have cut my feet deep enough, but thank God for two things—I never for any single moment lost the absolute certainty of Infinite Love and Wisdom ‘brooding over the face of the waters,’—the certainty of my Father’s arms around me,—and secondly that no suffering or pain could shake the love that has never been half so strong, so real, so ideal, so unselfish as now. I doubt if I ever half knew what being a friend was before,—I think I have earned the knowledge now—some of it.

And, Mother, about my work. I cannot tell you the strong exulting feeling that seems to set God’s seal to my work, in that through all the personal agony I have held firm to that: at no moment, I believe, would I have purchased what I longed for most on earth at the price of that,—that I have felt through all ‘The light may be taken out of my life (and thank God how far that is from being so!) but the object never can!’ Don’t you know how the lines that reminded us of the oath upon our head, that bade us ‘never again our loins untie, or let our torches waste or die’ was the strong helpful thing through it all.

And though I did believe in myself—and thou ever didst believe in me, Mother!—yet so long as my work ‘walked in silken shoon’ and lay side by side with the pleasantest life possible for me, there was a certain thought about fair weather sailing,—a certain (not doubt, but) diffidence in looking on to the time of breakers,—a feeling as of David, ‘I have not proved them.’ But now I feel that I have come to the proof,—that my armour has not failed in the battle,—something the sure happy confidence (farthest of all from presumption) ‘I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.’ You can’t think how it ‘heartened’ me (you know that nice old word?) to find that truly as well as verbally my work does hold the first place....

I am beginning to have hope, Mother! If I only suffer enough—and I don’t believe mine will ever be a smooth or easy life—I may yet be fit to be the head for which I am looking so earnestly....earnestly....

But all seems centred in the one thought, ‘Lead Thou me on!’—or rather, not ‘me’ but ‘us,’—all the wanderers.

“You never have the common honesty, Jack, in this most private journal (they say hardly anyone has) to put down the thought if it crosses your mind ‘Well, I think I am rather a fine fellow’ or its equivalent. Because it never comes? Oh, dear your precious ‘humility’! I wish Miss W. could look into you:—do you? Not you, you humbug!

‘Well, but,’ (retorts S. J.-B. accused) ‘I do work with a single purpose,—I have tried very hard, and, am sure, succeeded somewhat in this hard battle of these months,—what is the good of pretending to call myself names? Did not Job ‘maintain his integrity’?

You coward! You must skulk behind Job. Looks respectable, does it? Say honestly ‘I do try harder than some people do,’ for in truth I believe that is all your conceit does amount to.

I know from my heart I do recognize and reverence holiness and purity as far above mine as Snowden to a mole-hill. And is that conceit? I don’t believe it is. No,—‘Not guilty, S. J.-B.’ Plead boldly, and don’t give in for shamefacedness. And besides you have no right to deny His triumph ‘Who giveth us the victory,’—by fighting modest on the sham. You have won some victories. Thank God quietly, and pressing on to the things before. ‘I press towards the mark.’ God knows—and you know—there are enough to win. Oh, how far away lies doing even what is our ‘duty to do.’ But I don’t know that the realest soundest life limits itself to calling itself ‘miserable sinner.’ Zacchaeus told Christ what he tried to do. He did not rebuke him as man does and say, ‘No, believe yourself utterly vile (for the glory of your Maker?)’

There,—go to bed, S. J.-B.”

“... Well, I note markedly how, with all this light, all this growth,—respecting the suffering—(and I think all this would have brought a ‘right judgement’ too) I do not swerve one iota from my judgement of facts. I cannot conceive it one hairsbreadth more possible that any but a mental cloud can have worked in the way it has,—that under any possible circumstances my child, with her glorious nature and heart, can have acted as her image has....^[26]

But while I have at last manfully and honestly and cheerily faced the possibility of never seeing her again on earth—while I believe my loins are girded for the way quite irrespective of any future fate regarding her and me—while, having put my hand to the plough, God shall grant me grace never to look back even for her (who, God knows, is far enough before me) never to linger irresolute with thoughts that should and shall urge me to double speed,—yet it is curious how the whole fashion of my life shapes itself with the arriÈre-pensÉe of being ready for her ‘at midnight or cock-crowing or in the morning,’—saving with the thought of her as well as myself,—looking at every path as it opens to see that it is wide enough to tread together if she joins me ere its end,—making the most of the working time now that a pause of rest may fall due whenever she comes to claim the ‘moon.’

And I think, could she see my thoughts, my plans, my work, my resolves, she would not have them otherwise.”

“Miss Garrett and her strength!” writes S. J.-B. in her diary on May 19th, “making me break the 10th commandment. She doing Trigonometry, Optics, etc. Running where I crawl!”

“Today Miss Garrett’s business. Wrote about ‘Commission.’ Twice to [Royal] Circus with very sore feet. Mrs. Darts, friend of Lord Ardmillan. Lady Monteith (Lord Advocate). Argyle. Hope she will come. It will be everything to have her to help a little if I can.”

“May 29th. E. G. coming tomorrow,—sent her off a telegram this afternoon in case she might stay another day for the report I promised, and so lose tomorrow’s appointment with Balfour, whom I saw today with that splendid man, Begbie, who went down last night and this morning with me, and is to arrange with Newbiggin tonight for an appointment for her. My sore foot quite lame and not helpful for this bustle. However I believe I shall have done a bit of real work for her, and, as I said to Begbie, if there are such people, ready to face such an ordeal let’s help them in God’s name. One great obstacle the (sometimes) ‘faux air’ of consideration for ladies’ delicacy. People don’t seem to see how that is her affair. Besides she has faced it: it’s a day too late.”

Dearest Dora,

I do not know whether we are to look upon the result of the Physicians’ meeting most as a defeat or as a triumph,—the motion ‘to consider the question of admitting Miss Garrett’ was negatived by 18 votes to 16,—very disappointing as regards immediate results, but very much as a victory for the principle, just as at London University. You see they have not refused to admit,—only postponed the question indefinitely, so that, when time and opinion have been brought to bear, they can again entertain it without inconsistency.

In the meantime the expedition to St. Andrews was very successful,—Dr. Day and Principal Tulloch were both warmly favourable, and it seems quite probable that Miss Garrett would be admitted to the University there,—only unfortunately you see there is no medical school there, and so it would be but half a solution to the difficulties as she couldn’t get ‘nice little subjects’^[27] there....

I have only just come to anchor after some 36 hours’ incessant trotting about, etc., so I daresay my intellects are ‘even weaker than usual’ as C. A. would say.

I suppose I may now thank you again on paper for all your help, dear Dora. You can’t cough me down so conveniently. You don’t know how much you have helped me through.

“Well, it was grand fun,” she says in her diary, “and, if it had got in, might have played very well; but the chief temptation was the immense fun it would be. E. G. and I both thought we could command our faces. Her sister opposed, but we agreed, ‘No harm. We don’t sign to it,—and it’s what some might say; and, if the Review puts it in, it’s their look-out. It’s so weak, it can’t do harm that way.’way.’ She said, ‘Don’t let me know about it.’ I said she was very much like ‘Tom, steal the apple, and I’ll have half.’

Well, we agreed to send it and no harm done. I went to bed. I wasn’t quite content, yet I didn’t see any exact wrong,—and it was such fun!...

Then somehow those dear eyes fixed themselves on me and I felt their sad grieved look. I can’t, I can’t,—they would grieve,—‘Oh, Sophy!’

For a minute I went back,—‘Nonsense, no harm,’—then—

and those words ‘righteous altogether’ rang in my ears....

I went out to the sitting-room and sat down to write, and my first words to E. G. were, ‘Oh, I’ve annihilated the Review paper; it’s not righteous altogether.’ She said instantly, ‘No, I’ve been thinking in the night. I was going to advise you not to send it.’

My darling would be glad. God bless her!”

“‘Let all thy converse be sincere’: ‘and righteous altogether’.”

“Read the account of the College in Ohio for both sexes. Well, ‘Be thou but fit for the wall, and thou shalt not be left in the way.’ I do trust some day to graduate there or elsewhere. But still the great thing is to be able; the actual fact matters little.”

“I am beginning to have hope, Mother! If I only suffer enough,—and I don’t believe mine will ever be a smooth or easy life,—I may yet some day be fit to be the head for which I am looking so earnestly.”

“While you are so young,” writes Mrs. Jex-Blake, “there will be a fearful struggle to make Daddy bear your going abroad. We belong to a Society for Governesses to protect them when they go for the language,—young women have been sorely tried by bad R.C.s to make them perverts or corrupt them. And he has heard so much of this that Germany would be less terrible to him than Paris.”

“Written to Mummy at length about Germany,” she says. “Oh, the weary kind of languor that deprecates work and talk! It seems almost too much to have to do what is so hard, and to have, too, to justify it to others.”

Darling Mother,

... I had hoped that Germany was an accepted fact,—not only to you, but to my Father, as at his (or your ?) wish I took that before France, and at your’s before America.

I believe, my darling, that I am trying to look simply and earnestly at my life simply as an instrument for my work,—and shaping the one to serve the other.

I have long formed the conviction (which daily experience and the opinion of others strengthens) that best of all now for my object will be the devotion of years to the observation of other systems and the endeavour to glean everywhere materials for my future edifice. I believe that my work has come definitely before me as early as it did, with the express intention that I should make this use of years which later I could never recall.

It seems to me the simplest verbal expression of the presenting our lives a holy sacrifice, as is our reasonable service, to say,—God has, I believe, given me this work. I have certain qualifications and facilities for it. I will give up my life first to perfect those qualifications and then to use them as He shows me how. So now my whole intention and bent is to go anywhere in the world where, as it seems to me on sufficient grounds, I may expect to learn most for my work,—to learn what will make me myself a better scholar and to learn what will most help me to organize (if organization falls to my lot) a better system here in England.

If I am myself to be the head, I will make myself as good a one, God helping me, as He has put in my nature the material to make,—if I am to be a servant I will certainly be as thorough and complete a one as is in my utmost power. I do from the bottom of my heart pray God that on no failure may be written, ‘Had I worked more earnestly, more wisely, more diligently,—this had been avoided.’

You know, Mother, the purpose of my life,—you know the consecration, as I trust, of every power to one aim,—you have helped me nobly, gloriously to keep it in view,—you have told me that ‘manfully to fight under His banner’ is more blessed than ‘dreaming out life even on Mother’s shoulder’....

Well, Mother, you know my object, you know my hope. Look for yourself and tell me if you see for its fulfilment any course to be adopted rather than the one which seems to me marked out. Look at the work and that alone. Look at my life merely as the instrument,—see how it may best be turned to account,—most solemnly it is my deepest desire to arrive at a true answer.

What could I be doing that would as readily and as really forward my aim? In what way could I as usefully devote my time and power?

I believe most earnestly that it is not to any one plan or scheme of my own that I cling,—show me anything better for my work—show me anything even that you yourself think as good for it (looking at it only) and I am willing, renouncing every present thought, to take the new into deep consideration, and trust to the guidance of the Light to show me which is my appointed path.

But take the question by itself,—satisfy yourself whether you think I have judged rightly, as at least I have striven to judge honestly,—and, if you arrive at my own conclusion I think you will feel that that is the only important thing,—that if we are enabled to ‘perceive and know what things we ought to do’ we shall also surely be given ‘power faithfully to fulfil the same.’

As I have said often before, if you and my Father ever need me at home,—ever even desire my presence there,—I will relinquish for the time everything to that which I am sure God would have me hold my highest and dearest duty,—But I believe nothing else on earth must be suffered to come between me and my work, and, please God, nothing shall.

I see ‘my Father’s business’ clearly before me,—help me, Mother, wholly to consecrate my life as I would wish, to it.

As to all questions of detail, I think, darling, you need not be disturbed or anxious. Acting rightly, I am quite sure I shall be always cared for far more than I deserve. I think you have, and may have entire confidence in my practical common sense,—I think I have already shown that I am not very likely to get into difficulties. You have trusted me a great deal, Mother, have you had to repent it?

You may be sure that I shall strive my utmost to do wisely as well as rightly—indeed the one cannot be without the other. I think, moreover, you will be almost certainly satisfied with my plans and arrangements,—I am sure I have ‘caution’ strongly developed. And, though it may seem more new to you, I am very unlikely to find in my new life as difficult circumstances as those in which I have already had to act. I think that you may have confidence that I know you trust me, and that I shall not fail your trust. I think you may believe that I shall know and think of your wishes.

Then, as to any anxiety for myself. You have said much to me in the trials of the last months which I would ask you to repeat to yourself. You have told me to trust my darling in perfect faith to ‘Him who keepeth Israel’ and whose love you tell me is deeper and truer than mine. Can you not trust me to Him too?

I think there were some circumstances which there are not here, which did not make it easier.

And in truth, Mother, what is there to fear? If God (as I believe) needs my life to do a work for Him, He will surely keep it safely till that work is accomplished. If He does not, wherefore should one live? Could you regret for anyone you loved that they ‘in youth should find their rest’? When one feels completely how each of us is a link in God’s great chain,—how individual life and care sink out of sight, as hardly worthy notice. How one feels the whole object and end of life to be that God’s will should be done in us and by us in life and in death.

And whether in one or the other matters so little....

You see, Mother, I have had very much lately to realise all this;—that time and distance,—that all severance—are things of time—and shall be cast into the lake of fire. That now we have to do God’s work, ... that here we are not even to look for the fruition....

I have to cling very very earnestly now to principles,—I cannot see for myself,—my teachers are removed out of my sight,—I can only cling to the belief which is above and beyond all that that very sight and those very teachers were but instruments of the great Guide,—and that now without them, as before with them, ‘the Lord alone doth lead him.’ As I said this morning, so it seems to me tonight the root and fountain of everything ‘The Lord reigneth,—let the earth rejoice.’

“How peacefully came over me today ‘One sweetly solemn thought’ as they sat talking (I knew but a word or two) of someone found dead. How uncongenial A.P.’s remark, ‘I find these so sudden deaths awful.’ What she thought I don’t know, but I could not but say, ‘Oh, no!—going home?’

August 18th. Everybody going ‘zu reisen,’—Rhine, Harz, everywhere. Ah, childie, if you would only come quickly, we could have such a tour!—Alps,—Mont Blanc,—Geneva,—Venice, wherever you would; in a few weeks it will be too late. Too late! For that. But truly all is ‘in the fulness of time,’ and could we see and know, even our restless impatience would not hurry it....

As to money, well enough. I really expect to clear £20 of my allowance this quarter. I have that and about £1. 15s. in hand for stamps, washing and wine to the end of the quarter, besides £9 for rent. How jealously I do watch it! Really between my tour, my E.E.U.,^[28] and my distant college, I must look out that I don’t turn into a miser in earnest! I get such a trick of watching and scraping halfpence! And yet I don’t believe I should grudge them either if need were.

And one must look to pence if one would do anything with pounds.

Still, I believe of the two I have really more to look out against ‘nearness’ than extravagance. I was right enough when I told Frid (that poor little darling, I am sure her’s are ‘vicarious sufferings’)^[29] that she need never fear my spending 1/2d. I did not see my way to.

I expect, with my work, this is perhaps a fitness for it,—a surety against a great danger....

“Today Lina and I reading English. Frau brought a young man out, and Lina shut up all books at once—for the benefit of his remarks, I suppose. I, rather wrath, took up Rawlinson.”

“Sept. 13th. Saturday.^[31] Left GÖttingen at 5 a.m. with pleasant gifts from the children, and the famous glass knife from Frau B.

The morning cold, dank and misty,—darker than mornings are here even yet, I think. As we came south, perceptible increase of heat, till, leaving a cold autumn at GÖttingen, we found a hot summer at Frankfurt. Went to PfÄlzer Hof,—clean, cheap, and civil. Had a bedroom opening on a balcony, and very good night considering,—though, as I lay down, the venture rose strongly before me,—quite alone,—without counsel,—having come 200 miles to a place which had already refused me,—with the slender chance of personal representation prevailing,—uncertain, even if accepted, whether I could do the work,—in fact feeling strongly ‘not knowing whither I went’ yet trusting, like Abraham, I ‘went forth’. So fell asleep, seeing all perplexities, yet laying my head very softly on the pillow, ‘Oh, Lord, in Thee have I trusted: let me never be confounded!’

Well, I slept long,—breakfasted deliciously in my room,—dressed in black silk, etc., with no end of care, wrote a little note to Mother, almost to the beating of my own heart all the time.

Frl. E. had promised to come at 11. I waited till 12,—then came Frl. H. and Frl. M. Walked with them to the Institut,—was shown into the ‘parloir’ and left. They fetched me again,—walked round the square garden with its high convent walls^[32] (oh, how I remember those white berries!) Then out came Frl. von Palaus with her fine port and clear good eyes, and round hat. I told her how I wanted to study German education, and wished so much to enter here.

She asked ‘mes conditions’. ‘Moi, je n’en ai pas, Mlle.’ She would ‘parler aux autres dames.’

Marie M. was to show me the house. Then in Miss von Palaus’ room:—

‘Would I come again at four?’ ‘Certainly’. Then a series of warnings for my own comfort:—‘ Very simple here.’ ‘I most happy to hear it.’ ‘Very plain little room.’ ‘I am no sybarite.’ ‘Mixed communions.’ ‘I only ask toleration for myself, and am most willing to give it.’ ‘But as to money!’ I leave it entirely to them,—any arrangement of theirs I agree to. Enfin I said I was sure to be more than content. I had no fears.

‘Would I stay and dine?’ ‘Very gladly.’ ‘Very plain food.’ I was no epicure, and sure to be pleased. So the result was, in fine, that I have never dined anywhere else since, and find my prophecy well fulfilled.

After dinner talked to the governesses; they said how comfortable they were. I thought, ‘I only wish I were in your shoes,’ for I had only asked to come anyhow, as pupil or anything. Then Frl. von Gruben came from Frl. von Palaus:—A teacher (a Frl. von Endert) was absent from illness for 6 months (was it not wonderful?) would I take her place?—but (as the Institution was only just struggling straight again after its shocks) without salary? ‘Very gladly.’ How my heart leaped, though I spoke very quietly. What a chance for saving, if not gaining, money,—literally to earn my bread. Now I could hope for money for my E.E.U., for the £50 for Christmas /63,—perhaps for Bettws school,—perhaps for a tour!

Well, again I saw Frl. von Palaus,—her face had satisfied me from the first. ‘Did I quite understand? Was I willing to have no salary and no expense?’ ‘Very gladly.’

So off I went at 4 p.m., gay as a lark. Settled my bill, got a cab, and by 5 p.m. (less than 24 hours from my arrival) was established in my little cell at the G.D.I., Mannheim!—‘au comble de mes voeux.’ Thank God!

And now I have been here nearly a month,—already established as if for years, in full sunshine of content.

At work again! And, thank God, with such strength for it! A new sap and strength in all my veins,—my heart in songs of gladness.

The heavy burden seems to have rolled away,—the sting and bitterness quite gone; strength and power returned to my hand,—colour and brightness to my life. Again I understand ‘the thrill, the leap, the gladness’—again the sunshine has broken over earth. Now I go up and down the long corridors, catching with my hand at a great beam, in ‘superfluous energy’ again, (my darling!)—a smile over my whole face as I think I will tell her of my life in this weird old monastery—young bounding life all around—I myself no longer ‘going softly’.

‘Thank God! Thank God!’ I can say nothing else.”

My own Darling,

Though I must now be rather more economical of space (for I can send but 1/4 instead of 1/2 oz) I cannot resist beginning a fresh letter to you, having but just posted my last, with one also to Daddy. I am afraid Mr. Bevan must be again disappointed to learn that there is still no kind of prospect of starvation for me,—quite the contrary.

I will tell you our plans as far as I know them yet. We get up, as you know, at 5.30 a.m., breakfast at 6.30, begin work at 7. At 10 we have bread handed round, then at one we dine, very well, I think.... At 3 we teachers (!) have cups of coffee, and at 5 or 6 some grapes before going out for a walk. At 6 tea (or perhaps at 7) and then at 8.30 a regular meat supper. So you see we are not so very badly off,—indeed it seems to me to be something going all day almost!...

Mother, I can’t lie down without telling you of the very beautiful, soothing influence one thing has (perhaps unexpectedly) over me. I mean the perfect lovingness and charity in which we all of such opposite faiths live together, and have just knelt and prayed together. There seems to me something so inexpressibly touching and happy in it,—everyone seems so loving to the rest, so far from cavilling for ‘words and names’: each so absolutely free and all so far from seeking to proselytize. At meals we stand round the table,—‘Nous voulons prier, mesdemoiselles,’ and in silence everyone together thanks God ‘in his own tongue’,—one marking only that some cross themselves silently and some do not. Then at night we kneel together,—we have a fine loving German hymn, and a text for us all,—words lovingly pronounced by our Roman Catholic head that yet every Presbyterian minister might say. There seems to me something so inexpressibly soothing in this union,—so far stronger than all differences. I can hardly tell you the rest and refreshment it is to me now, worn and weary as my spirit is. It struck me very much in its beauty tonight as Miss von Palaus pronounced,—‘There is but one name given under heaven among men whereby we may be saved’, and we all received it on our knees,—Protestants and Romanists, Unitarians and Trinitarians,—each ‘in his own tongue.’ Was it not beautiful how just that name bound us all together,—Christians,—seeking at least the spirit of Christ who loved us all,—our Master,—that we might ‘love one another’....

I am charmed to learn the Scotch girl, Janet McDonald, has learned both Latin and Algebra,—both wonderful acquirements here,—and I look forward to perhaps doing some work with her, if she gets on well enough with other things.

2 p.m. Tuesday. The politeness of these girls is really quite refreshing. Last night, going up to my room after dark, there were several girls at the candle-stand, and, when I asked for a candle, one of them lighted one, and, with a reverence and ‘Permettez-moi, mademoiselle,’ carried it the whole way upstairs for me in spite of my efforts to get hold of it,—it being quite out of her way.... 7 p.m. Well, Mother darling, I wonder if you can sympathize in my intense exaltation and delight at the—for the first time in my life—literally earning my bread,—something like ‘My First Penny’, you know. I have had my ‘surveillance de musique’, but am longing quite childishly for the commencement of my special work,—I see teaching all around, and am just wild to be at it. Can Mother understand and sympathize?

Thursday 18th. My letter at last. I have been several times to the post in hopes of it.... Today I have had one lesson, and am just going to give another,—delicious! It’s really like oats to a horse who has been kept a year on hay. Miss Garrett was right enough when she said, ‘Get teaching!’ I quite laugh at myself to feel how radiant I am with delight at being again in harness.”

Dear Lucy,

You will, I think, already have heard from my Mother that I cannot now offer myself to accompany L. to Paris. I do not know if you are aware that three weeks ago I wrote to Mrs. B., urging her, as strongly as I knew how, to entrust L. to me for the winter, and offering to take her to any part of Europe which was thought best. I believe, at Mrs. Z.’s entreaty, Mrs. B. did consult some medical man on the subject, but I am sorry to say they confirmed her resolution of ‘keeping her under her own eye’—of course not understanding, as you and I think we do, all the circumstances.

I therefore got so decided a refusal that even I felt further entreaty to be useless, and, giving up the point, I entered at once into a six months’ engagement as English Teacher at the Grand Ducal Institution at Mannheim, where I have now been just a week, and therefore, of course, no further change is now in my power as regards my own movements....

I am much pleased on the whole with the kind of tone I find between teachers and pupils, and with the general principles, which, if not the very highest, are yet greatly superior to what you find in most English boarding schools.

By the bye, before I say Goodbye, I must tell you what horror my open window at night (even now) occasions the natives! Having violent headache some time back, an old servant assured me it was ‘the window’, and since I have been here I have been entertained with the account of a gentleman who went mad, as I understand, entirely from sleeping with an open window! So now you see the fate before you as well as me! Besides that, the doctor here (more shame for him) assures me I shall get a fever!

Goodbye, dear Lucy. Remember me to the B.s when you write.

My own Darling,

... It amuses me very much as a proof of how soon a habit is acquired (and also, I think, an evidence that it suits me very well indeed) to find that now, and indeed for a week past at least, I always wake of myself just at 5.30 a.m.,—usually just 5 or 10 minutes before I am called.^[33] I wasn’t wrong about my power of adaptability, was I, Mother? Indeed I thrive greatly on hours, fare and all other circumstances; I have not been so strong for many months,—indeed now it is just a year. What a strange, grey, weird year!...

You see idleness and listlessness is about the worst thing possible (I was feeling that in GÖttingen): now my days are full, not only materially, but really, for it is the kind of employment that does fill and satisfy me. And, I suppose, next to idleness, the worst thing would be over mental fatigue.... It is, too, another advantage, which anybody else can hardly appreciate, to have my day mapped out for me with military exactness,—to find my work always ready before me, and quite definite and imperative,—yet making no demand on my strength almost—always pleasant and always changing.

It would have been impossible to have planned a life suiting me personally more exactly to my finest need,—and the glory is that at the same time it is part of my work, and serving it very really and materially. I don’t suppose in that point of view either it would be possible to put my time to better advantage....

You see, Mother, how you get my sunny day-dreams now, as you used to get the weary ones. I don’t know if everyone has words running all day long in their head as I have,—it makes a glorious song sometimes—silently enough, but running like a golden thread through daily work and labour, raising it all till ‘the parapets of heaven with angels leaning’ come full in view.... Do you remember George Herbert’s delicious poem—?

It is to me so exquisitely significant of the joy and peace that floods one’s whole being, but does not very readily find words, except in those already familiar to it, like those Psalm utterances,—or like sometimes fragments of our own dear Liturgy or hymns;—and I think that is perhaps one of the greatest uses and values of such things. In the deep struggle times, one of the things that helped me most of all was always those glorious words of consecration that reminded me of the cross on the brow ‘In token that thou shalt not be ashamed to confess the faith of Christ crucified, and manfully to fight under His banner against the world, the flesh, and the devil, and to continue Christ’s faithful Soldier and servant unto thy life’s end!’ And again, the Communion words about ‘ourselves, our souls and bodies’.

Oh, dear, how one does write on! But I think it pleases Mother, and I’m sure it helps me....

I fancy my darling will be pleased to get a kiss from her little one to welcome her in London, as she cannot see her knight at Shoreditch!—dear old lady,—would she could! But, Mother, you would let Daddy go with you if you really wished for anyone? I tell you, as I have told you a hundred times before, how gladly your child will stay at home altogether if ever Mother really wishes for and wants her there, or will come from anywhere at any moment as rapidly as trains can bring her, if only Mother wishes for her for any purpose or none.”

“How can people paint a teacher’s life as always such a suffering one! My room now quite a little Paradise. Frl. von Palaus up about it again this morning.... Now only some ivy and a tin pot wanted!

My Schematism [?] very light. Certainly they take a generously liberal view of ‘earning my bread’. Well, at all events it shall be well earned, if not largely. I’m half afraid of myself now that I have the responsibility of 25 English pupils. I am really very anxious to get them on so well and so rapidly as to convince the world of the wisdom of having an English teacher!”

“We now have an English mistress. Miss Blake, and she gives us so many things to do that I am already too fatigued to entertain me any longer with you: she is an inhabitant of your land, and, if all people are so diligent there, it is a wonder that you are not all philosophers.”

“Miss D. has greatly laughed herself into my good books,—such a cheery simple merry laugh. I don’t think anything very bad could hide under such a laugh at her age.”

“That good Frl. von Palaus! Well might I today liken her to a sunbeam! How she lights up the very house,—how bright burns her lamp,—yet how simply!”

“Your letter has cheered me and done me good,” she writes on Christmas day, “taking away the clouds in a great measure, that would hang over a day that owed so much of its brightness to your dear presence; but truly, as you say, we have a far truer unity and a sympathy which I fear might never have come but through trial and separation.”

“Who is sufficient for these things? seems my whole cry today. I don’t know why especially, but I seem so oppressed with a sense of the greatness, the weight of my work,—and of my own miserable insufficiency for it. Oh, so weak and stupid and unfit! And it isn’t humility,—it’s just truth.

I’m horribly showy,—always (voluntarily or not) deceiving people into a belief into talents I haven’t. Then I’ve will enough and would work, but no health or strength for it. That’s not your doing, S. J-B. ‘Hath not the Potter—?’

Besides, you’ll never be called upon to do what you can’t. God will give you power or send another in your stead.... And ‘who is sufficient?’ ‘My Grace is sufficient’.

Yet I am thankful, too, for even this fit of despair or at least downheartedness,—for I was fearing horribly, lest, my whole heart being bent on one hope and plan, I might be too far identifying my success with it, lest I might be seeking to win something for myself,—not simply to see God’s will done by me or without me. And from the bottom of my heart did go up, ‘Lord, put me aside utterly if need be!—and here, perhaps, the answer.’”answer.’”

“Cold. Therefore rather cross and grumbling. Prowling about the corridors with shoulders nearly up to my ears, mind do. And I fool and sybarite enough to conjure up pictures of a certain dainty little room with blazing fire.... ‘Shame on ye, Gallants, wha ride not readily!’... Well, well, indeed it was not really a grumble,—only a John Bull growl. You don’t think I really give in an inch for such nonsense?

No. Well, there, that’ll do.

As well to grumble to my book as to poor small folk downstairs, who want bracing not enervating.

Granted. But why either?

Oh, now you’re infringing the liberty of the press! I may write anything that wells up.

There, there!—pax.”

“Oh, how weary I am after those hours of struggle internal and external!” writes S. J.-B. in her diary. “Almost like being tied to a stake,—so suffering, so helpless. And this I?—who used to fancy I had power to rule! Two months more will see me well nigh home I trust. Some faint foreshadowing of ‘Then are they glad because they are at rest.’ The thoughts of my green nest, and of the ruddy firelight, and the hymns at Mother’s knee very frequent in these days of struggle.”

“(Miss v. Palaus) will miss my darling and her unselfish love terribly when she leaves.... Without any great vanity you must know that your hearty ready help must be most refreshing to her, and your wide-awake state must have a great influence over the Girls.”

“I cannot believe that your work has been done as indifferently as you think. I believe you have always done what you could, and fought hard against feelings and every form of indolence or selfishness. Surely you could somehow raise some response to fun; only perhaps a good deal arises from your being English and they not understanding.”

“I despair of getting a satisfactory breviary, unless you can send me definite orders for Treacher to procure one. Marvellous rubbish at the only R.C. shop. They were very anxious to fetch the R.C. priest!—to help me,—‘were sure he was within.’ Fancy if Daddy had come by, with the carriage at the door and I inside in deep conversation with said Priest!...”

“I don’t call you so much a ‘sweet-tempered’ as an ‘excellent-natured’ girl,—most unselfish, energetic, and at all times ready in the behalf of others. A regular ‘sweet temper’ is rarely found with very strong deep feelings.... I don’t think there ever was such true love as your’s—unless it be her’s under disguise. You would not now be able to stand alone as you do had circumstances not separated you. God has two great works,—one for her, one for you.”

“I am quite sure, by pouring out your heart to me, you help me on as well as yourself. You bring before me such strengthening texts and poetry, and our hearts get so very closely knit. It may seem selfish to say so, but your sorrows have greatly enhanced my joys by bringing us close, and, as it were, entwining us inseparably.”

My own Darling Mother,—I’m right sorry you didn’t get your baby’s first morning greeting,—I went out on purpose to post the letter on Friday that you might. It’s very tiresome too that the other little messenger didn’t reach you,—however Mother knows it was sent, and it’s useless to risk sending more the same way; you shall get it in duplicate when I come home,—whenever that is.

Sometimes I think I ought to stay here till I have mastered my difficulties and learned to rule,—then again I see that years and years of my life will be but a learning of that lesson, and the great thing is to see how to dispose of them most wisely, not in obstinacy or in self-consenting even on a point like that. Besides month after month of unbroken work does come to tell on one, specially if one starts not over strong; and I feel myself looking forward with significant expectation to the coming rest (and still more, refreshment time) again,—to say nothing of seeing faces and hearing voices that I fancy may too not be sorry to see and hear mine again. I am watching the now really lengthening days almost like a schoolchild,—indeed I am tremendously much of a child yet, Mother,—and thinking how the days and weeks roll on and bring the homecoming nearer. Even if I returned here, I must have a holiday and not a very short one,—for I have got a good deal used one way or another,—though now I am again delightfully cheery and strong,—and able to work twice as well among the children when a laughing word comes instead of a weary one; and they feel it too, I am sure.

I shall be very curious to read Colenso’s book,—will you send me its name, please? It is so very easy a way to get up a laugh (which somebody calls the Devil’s keenest sword) against opinions or people you don’t agree with, by such a jest as that Colenso wants to turn ‘the Bible into Rule of Three sums’,—so much more easy than justifiable or Christian. It’s just a word which, said of a great Mathematician, is sure to ‘take’ whether there is any or no sense in it. People like to laugh and repeat what sounds sharp, and prove their own superiority (?) to such men as they can’t hope to get within 100 miles of in attainments.

Besides in a certain non-sneering sense, it may really be true without inferring any blame. (I wonder if you like me to discuss the question or not? If not, just tear up the next page or two unread, that’s all.)

The Rule of Three (as it is most absurdly called) is perhaps the purest form of development of the principle of Cause and Effect,—the principle that rules the world and lies at the root of all science and all logic. You see an effect,—it must have a corresponding cause. You are aware of a cause,—you imply with certainty answering effect. ‘To look through Nature up to Nature’s God’—is strictly (if you choose so to call it) a Rule of Three sum. Again,—‘These are Thy works, Parent of Good,—Thyself how wondrous then!’—a pure syllogism,—or, if you please, Rule of Three sum—thus:

Or, more beautiful and more sacred than all,—‘He that spared not His own Son ... how shall He not with Him freely give us all things?’

The form of reasoning that St. Paul did not disdain to use need hardly be a reproach to Colenso.

God Himself does give us minds and does bid us use them,—He is not afraid of His truth standing in the sunlight, though some of His people are. Robertson draws out very beautifully how the Christ never sought blind credence,—superstitious belief even in His words because they were His. He never said ‘I say so,—there’s an end,’ (as so many of His followers like to put in His mouth). ‘If I say the Truth, why do ye not believe me?’—again, more exquisite still in its loving humility,—‘Though ye believe not me, believe the works’,—‘Search the Scriptures’ etc. etc.,—always praying them to test Him by His works, by the voice of their own conscience, by the testimony of their sacred books,—continually protesting against the idea of His own assumption of sovereign power, ‘I know nothing of Myself.’ But here I’m getting on another subject, and I’ll stop.

But I always get greatly interested in a discussion about the Bible,—people seem to me often so hopelessly superstitious and illogical about it, and so to miss its truest, most blessed meaning.

It always seems to me that the question divides itself into two perfectly distinct parts,—regarding, so to speak, the spiritual and temporal part of the Bible. The first is entirely without the province of the intellect or the reason,—‘Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, ... but God hath revealed them unto us by His spirit.’ As Colani says (I think, indeed, it was him I quoted before) it is not a question of logic or of evidence whether we believe ‘the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart, O God Thou wilt not despise!’,—the certainty of its truth is self-evident to us; we are absolutely sure the moment we hear the words that the All-Good rejoices in repentance and not in blood. It is the word of God from without speaking to the Spirit of God within us ‘whose temples we are.’ In Coleridge’s forcible words, ‘it finds us’,—it pierces through ear and brain irresistibly to the spirit of every man. Yes, every man; there is not one in the world however debased who could doubt whether God preferred a broken heart or a costly gift. He may not think about it, he may let the words pass by him, but, receiving them at all into his mind, he cannot doubt....

Feel,—suffer, and words like those bring their own proof; let them once enter and you need not ask whether their truth is received or not. ‘Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.’ We know it is so; no one in the world could really doubt for one second whether holiness or impurity brings the man to God,—to see Him....

In all this the whole mass of ‘Evidence’ goes for absolutely nothing. If the Bible had never been heard of to this moment, and I picked it off a dunghill, those words and truths would just as irresistibly transfix and ‘find’ me as a two-edged sword.

But since, as Pulsford says, ‘Most people get their faith through their heart, not through their head,’—there are thousands of God’s children who, seeing and feeling the infinite beauty and pricelessness of these words and truths,—but not seeing fully their infinite omnipotence, their absolute impregnability,—fancy that to preserve from the slightest danger what is to them so infinitely precious, it is necessary to claim for the whole casket the same authority and value that the jewel claims for itself: and then, because this claim does not and cannot maintain itself, they rush to arms for it and brand as ‘rejectors of the Bible’ some who, like your child, find in its words the very deepest blessings of existence....

I don’t know enough about it to have an opinion worth anything, but as far as I can judge, it seems to me the result of open fair criticism rather establishes than disturbs the veracity of all Jewish history as given in the Bible since the time of Moses, while it does not seem to me possible satisfactorily to defend the authenticity of the account of the Creation and probably the first few centuries,—both from the certainties of Geology and probabilities of history, and also from the internal evidence.

But what is the leading point to me is the folly of trying to arrest honest investigation about anything,—and the especial mistake of fancying that any result arrived at could touch the real standing and position of the Bible. For myself, I can say in all sincerity that if not one fraction only but the whole biblical history were proved to be utterly unreliable and mistaken, it would not make the difference of a straw’s weight either to my life or my faith,—it is not as a rival of Herodotus that I have valued the Bible,—the destruction of the historical credit of the one would matter just as much to me as that of the other. We might lose some grand illustrations of God’s love and care, but the truths would remain, and the history of any century, of any land, of any man, leaves Him not ‘without a witness’....

Well, Mother, it has indeed been more than a page or two,—if it pains or wearies you do but burn it; but I am glad from the bottom of my heart to tell you honestly what and why I believe on a subject where I fear Mother is a little afraid of me;—to put at least calmly and clearly before you other thoughts and words than those you hear oftenest,—not that you may accept, but that you may consider them. For you as for me, Mother, God ‘shall lead us into all truth’.

Sunday. You asked me about Miss v. Palaus. She isn’t ill now, but I think she suffers altogether from this terrible ‘no holiday’ system. Think what it is to go on for 26 years!—with only a week’s break at a time, and that perhaps once a year.

Dear, I broke off abruptly, it occurring to me to apply the principle of how bad it was to go on without change and how one was bound to get all one could; also that it was a bright day and that I was no use where I was, so had better go to Heidelberg....

The sermon was about sorrow and bereavement, commonplace enough and disagreeable sometimes, but chiming in in bits with some thoughts of mine. For one thing he said it was a duty to rouse oneself after a time and go back to one’s daily work. Now, Mother, you know better than anyone how I have strained every sinew to take up my tool again and work on, from the very first months even. But there is a certain state of things which I can’t honestly conceal from myself which makes the struggle in some ways a very terrible one.

I am sure ‘what is is best’, and I don’t say one word in the form even of sorrow, only of perplexity. But, Mother, I haven’t the least the mind I had,—I have waited and waited to see if they would not waken but now for nearly 18 months my mental powers seem struck with stupor. It’s no use urging them,—they don’t answer the call. The love and power of mental work seem to have faded away. I just jog on from day to day with sense enough for daily life perhaps,—but I don’t seem to get any nearer any return of intellects. I won’t say it would have been better—because if it would, it would have been so—but I don’t doubt if I had had a crushing physical illness last Xmas, the agony would have exhausted itself and I probably risen from a brain fever as strong as ever,—but no physical relief coming in this form, the whole weight seems to have fallen on my brain and paralyzed it. My whole mind sometimes seems a blank,—the children ask me simple questions and I know nothing. Sometimes it’s hard work to crush back the tears when it is so.

You know those terrible (they did frighten me horribly) kinds of delusions that showed me a white dog or a wheelbarrow just when I was going to pull up when driving you.

Well, Mother, it’s no use to go on,—no use even to say ‘What am I to do?’ One feels sure in truth that God ‘will find a way’ and show it to me....

But the time goes on and on, very many months already, and yet no streak of light comes from any quarter. One does not see the faintest sign of change, and yet one cannot see how things are permanently possible as they are.

You don’t think it is any want of will or effort in me, Mother? Surely God ‘reaps not where He has not strawed’.

Oh, Mother, Mother, what it will be to rest the tired stupid old head on your bosom again.

80 lessons a week is too much I’m afraid for Ruth, but I can’t pretend to look after her when I’m in Germany,—and perhaps nobody gets on much the worse for that fact. It’s a very forcible rebuke to one’s vanity to find how little anybody is missed from anywhere, (except in their Mother’s hearts, darling) and one or two others perhaps. Yet that’s a hasty way to speak. I believe I do have a great deal of love from more people than I deserve....

Please tell me by what post this arrives.”

My own Darling,

Your letter did not reach me till first post this morning. I quite believe Truth will in itself bear coming to the light, without suffering. But I do fear there are many minds, heads and hearts without one sentence of heavenly truth upon which to fall back for comfort, which may be irreparably injured by the doubt and contemptcontempt thrown upon historical parts; and thence deduce, ‘All is false, and cannot do me good or help me in any way.’ I think I must send you the last ‘Cornhill’ come in this afternoon. I imagine the critique in it is from a man who would favour free enquiry,—a son of Dr. Arnold’s,—Matthew Arnold. He says, ‘I censure Colenso’s book because, while it impresses strongly on the reader that the Pentateuch is not to be read as an authentic narrative; it so entirely fails to make him feel that it is a narrative full of divine instruction in morals and religion, etc., etc.’ I ought to have stated that all this comes in in a critique upon Stanley’s ‘Lectures on the Jews’, which Arnold greatly admires. Now that February is at hand, I find that the January! Macmillan has an actual critique upon Colenso. Shall I send it to you? I have not read it. I asked Hetty if she had. She considers it severe on Colenso. I think I shall send it.

Your long dissertation did not annoy or weary me at all, indeed it rejoiced mother’s heart. You seem to have all you want to live and die upon. What can you need more? Certainly I have individually great comfort and enjoyment from seeing Christ as my Substitute in a manner that I apprehend you do not. If it be, as I suppose, needful, I am sure your loving Father will give it you in His good time. As to your mental powers, it is very strange. We can only wait patiently and say, ‘It is the Lord. Let Him do what seemeth Him right’. I don’t suppose the important precious discipline you are going through could have been produced in time of full mental vigor. That will assuredly return if for your real good. Meanwhile you may well trust Him who has done such great things for you. I long as much as you to have you resting on my bosom. Rest you must have: refreshment of spirit I pray you may have.... Nothing, as you say, invalidates the grand truths responded to from within. At all times the Eternal God is thy refuge and underneath are the everlasting arms.

“Only fancy, Daddy has been reading Colenso’s book!”

“Well, I do feel most uncommonly seedy,—no doubt about that,—having just waded through my packing somehow, and ‘bitterly thought of the morrow’, and how many leagues and hours lie between me and a snug bed, clean sheets and beef tea. But, somehow or other I do mean to push through and trust my luck for falling as usual on my feet, catlike. Specially anxious, by the bye, not to be spied out here or it’ll all go down to the baths”—she had been bathing in the Rhine before breakfast—“as I daresay this heavy cold may, which reduces me to, or below, the level of the inferior animals.

Well, three days hence! Who can’t hold out that time?”

“Dear Miss D.,

Firstly I don’t like being called names, and secondly I have been overwhelmingly busy,—which two reasons must excuse my not having earlier sent you the address.”

“I agree with Macdonald,” is her connotation. “The only argument some people understand is being knocked down, and it’s cruel to withhold it from them.

And a very mild knocking down this time.”

“July 8th. Annette’s Sunday School. ‘The outward and visible sign in baptism?’

‘Please, ma’am, the baby, ma’am.’”

Dear Lucy,

Though I know you will have heard before this of dear L.’s going home to her rest, I think you will like to have a few lines from me, as I believe E. was not able to write to you herself.

You heard probably of her breaking a blood vessel last month soon after her return to London, and it was very soon after that that I saw her for the last time alive. She was very gentle and quiet then, and I have since thought that she more entirely realised how near the end was than I and others did,—for there was no immediate danger then as far as anyone could know. When I told her again how much a duty I thought it for her to take the utmost care of her life for His service Who gave it, and added ‘Not that I want you or anyone to fear death,—that is the last thought one should have of the Home-going’,—she said,—‘Oh, yes,—I never did, and I never understood why people do.’ I told her Mother of this afterwards, and it is a very pleasant memory, among others.

Well, it was on Thursday, November 3rd. that this terrible spasmodic asthma came on, and I am afraid the struggle was sore for just the week,—but there was mercy in that too, for it made her Mother glad to see her at rest after it. Just a week later she died, very peacefully,—passing in sleep into the rest that remaineth. I heard of it on Thursday and went up to London directly, and I never was more heartily glad of having done anything in my life, for both Mrs. B. and E. seemed so glad to see me, and you can hardly believe the peaceful happy few hours we had together,—indeed there came to me (and I think to them too in some degree) such an intense realization of what the joy and light was into which she had entered, that no room seemed left for any pain even for oneself. I did love L. very much,—more perhaps than any of you knew,—but when I stood looking down on that calm pale face, the only words that would come into my mind were,—‘He was not, for God took him’. It seemed quite impossible even for a moment to identify her with that chill silence,—one felt she was already in the everlasting arms. Dear child! She left altogether a very happy memory,—of a bright clear life, and a calm peaceful death. We ‘thank God for this our dear sister departed....’

The funeral is to be next Wednesday,—I know that you will not be absent in spirit, though you cannot be there in presence as I hope to be. Mr. Plumptre will read the service at Kensal Green.

I do not know if I helped dear L. in her life. I know that she has helped me in her death almost beyond my conception. I ‘never feared’ death, and I always felt theoretically how it was the ‘going home’ and that only, but I never felt it with the practical intensity of this week. I never entered before into half its beauty and its holiness,—I feel almost as if I could never associate sadness with the idea again. Let it come in what form it may,—‘God giveth us the Victory’.

Just before she died, L. finished a story at which she had been working to compete for some magazine prize,—if it does not win this, we hope to get it published separately, as a memorial that will be beloved of many,—and indeed I hope it may come out in this form. I have offered to undertake the whole business. It is very pleasant to me that she has left this,—is it not to you?

Goodbye, dear Lucy,—my letter is already enormous, but I don’t fear your criticisms.

“Dearest Sophy,” writes the mistress of Honing Hall,—“It will be delightful to see you here. How often have I said to myself lately (having no one else to address my remarks to,—your Uncle being entirely taken up with his harvest, and more bothered than ever by it). ‘I do wish Sophy would offer her company for a few days.’

So, well pleased was I to see your handwriting this morning. I can meet you anywhere within reasonable distance. On Thursdays I have only your old friend, Little Grey, and on Tuesday, 30th., some of the Catfield people are coming over. Should you be here then, it would be an additional pleasure to all.”

“Dear Miss Blake,

... Pray bring back from America a few more such good stories as you told me yesterday. I say this not ‘hoping I should see your face no more’.

“Madam,

I have had some correspondence with Professor Plumptre of Queen’s College about establishing a Ladies’ College in this locality, and he has referred me to you as likely to help me in this good work. Notwithstanding the fact that the movement for the improvement of female education has now been for some time set on foot, this populous neighbourhood is still very destitute in this respect. I have two girls, 12 and 13 years of age, and after making enquiries in very competent quarters, I have been told that there is only one Ladies’ School ‘worth a farthing’ in or near Manchester, and that is the Ladies’ College on the north side of the city at Higher Broughton. We are living on the south side and are surrounded by a large number of wealthy people who must necessarily miss such educational facilities. I wish therefore to try whether a good Ladies’ College can be founded on this side of Manchester, and I would be glad to know whether you could introduce me to a lady qualified to act as Principal of such an Institution. Mr. Plumptre was not quite sure whether you might be disposed to undertake such a work yourself or not, but, if you were so, I feel sure from what he has told me that the matter could not be in better hands.... You will understand, of course, that the matter at present is only in the phase of a project.”

“On Tuesday and today received letters from Mr. Morse, telling me of the Bishop’s support, and thus answering my question ... asking me for ‘any suggestions’. I feel little more is to be done without an interview, but write somewhat on essential heads ‘with great diffidence’:

I am sure that no one can give their really best work to any scheme which does not stand on foundation principles with which they are in sympathy, and, bearing in mind the proposition you hinted at in your first letter, I am bound both for your sake and for my own to ascertain as far as possible how far the harmony of our views would allow me to be a really efficient worker in your cause. I have a great belief in the superiority of rule by Law over that of individual will, and should as Director of any such College be very anxious to have as little as possible left to my own choice and judgment; but, having once been able to acquiesce in the spirit of established regulations, would deem it essential to have absolute authority to see them carried out alike by teachers and pupils. I am sure that to have such questions ill-defined at first is one of the most fruitful sources of after disturbance and failure in a college....

I believe that really good women teachers are more able to measure the power of a girl’s mind, and force her to do a certain amount of good work than men, who are in my experience very apt to let young pupils slip between their fingers, as it were.

At the same time, after a thorough groundwork has been laid, I think first-rate lecturers (almost useless till then) become quite invaluable.

Meaning—I want an interview.

“Dec. 1st. 1864. Reached Manchester yesterday. Staying now with the Morses.

Capital man he,—clear, energetic and practical; a little ‘trammelled’ by clerical bonds, but in the main wide and satisfactory.

Spite of the double assurance of Minnie and Ruth that I need not talk of my Unitarianism,—I could not be quite silent, and so tonight, naturally enough, and I think truthfully, gave in my half-declaration.

Mr. Morse said (in answer to my question whether we might not be ‘too episcopal’) that, without wishing to exclude any, he wished to have the College decidedly of Church origin, and should be sorry to have other than Church main workers.

I said, ‘Then perhaps you had better not have me.’

‘But do you not belong to the Church?’

‘Well, I was baptized and confirmed in it.’

‘But you go there rather than Chapel?’

‘Well, I don’t know. I go there pretty often. I go where helps me most.’

‘Where else?’

‘Oh, mainly Unitarian’, adding ‘I have not, however, any intention of joining the Unitarians, but they have helped me’, and, in answer to a farther remark ‘that I ought to make up my mind clearly black or white’.

‘That I can’t do.... However on the whole, though very unorthodox, I believe I am on the whole most of a Churchwoman, and certainly non-proselytizing, nor, I believe in the least likely to originate any religious difficulty.’

Still he was evidently ‘stumped’, and I daresay I shall hear more of it.

Yet, on the whole, feeling as I do, I cannot regret speaking.

“As to my contumacy (it’s really that and not the heresy!), W. and G. to be consulted. I said how I wished him to do only what he thought right,—yet believing they would be wise to have me(!)

I think he surely wishes it, and, as I should guess he would find his consultees not otherwise inclined, a very small push would decide him that way.

(Stories,—‘The fool hath said in his heart,’ etc. Old sexton loq. ‘I can’t but think, sir, there is a God after all’).”

“Dec. 4th. Came to Rugby last night. The music in chapel again and again bringing me well-nigh to tears,—so weak and thin is one worn.

(Yet should surely notice the good Miss Garrett’s medicine does me—taken about a fortnight now.)...

And how the conviction came (when first this Manchester scheme) ‘Yes,—“be thou but fit for the wall, and thou shalt not be left in the way.” It is true!...

Is Minnie far wrong in her ‘Men have the best of it’? Easiest,—yes!—

Fancy the pleasure of going through School,—College,—returning hallmarked, for good happy well-paid work here.

Yet is the easiest ‘Best’?

Must there not be pioneers?—can their work be easy?

Yet is there not (in many tongues and roads) a ‘noble army of martyrs’?

Shall we like Erasmus ‘not aspire to that honour’?

But, oh, dear, when the heart’s light and brain clear and life sunny, it’s easy to ‘scorn delights’ (having plenty of the reallest) but when the ‘laborious days’ fail and only weary and dim ones remain—when the tunnel narrows and darkens, and nearly all the light and strength seems to have leaked out—

Then—?

‘My Grace is sufficient for thee’. No other help,—‘none other fighteth for us’—and what need?—‘Only Thou, O God.’”

“Dec. 5th. M.’s and my mutual objection to family prayers evidenced by staying out tonight. Justified?

I say, prayer continual and interjectional rather than formal and obligatory.

But follow out logically? Public worship, etc.”

“Feb. 22nd. Manchester scheme obiit. R.I.P.! I must be really in a bad way to be able to find so few mental tears for this! It does practically close up my foreground again. Heu mihi! Why mayn’t useless people be smothered out of the way if there’s no possibility of being or doing or having?

‘Because you’ve got to learn’, as that good Miss Harry said last night.”

My dear Lucy,

I feel rather guilty in not having written to you before this, but I do not think that you will attribute the omission to any want of interest in one of my dear old ‘children’.... I have to send you my hearty congratulations and good wishes for the life that seems opening so happily before you. Happiness is a wonderfully solemn thing,—a thing to go down on one’s knees and thank God for....

Don’t be too self-distrustful, dear child,—I don’t believe that you are at all ‘unfit to be a help to anyone’.... Send me as long a letter as your indolence will admit of, and tell me all about your prospects, and whether your engagement is likely to be a short or long one.”

... Having heard from E. B. of your marriage last month, I was not quite so bewildered as I might have been at receiving an epistle from a certain mysterious ‘Lucy Unwin’—

... I am so glad to hear of your being so happy, dear child (dear me, I suppose I ought to be more respectful to so venerable a matron!) I daresay if I heard the other side of the question it would not be so full of wailings over your incompetencies general and particular as yours is.... I should like exceedingly to see you in your new sphere ... and please thank your husband very much for taking me so much on trust as to want to see me,—though perhaps, after all, the real compliment is to you! It will be a great pleasure for me to come to you for a few days when I am next in the North.”North.”

I had hoped to pay you a visit before this, and I am afraid you will be disappointed as well as myself when I tell you it must now, I fear, be indefinitely deferred, for circumstances have made me decide rather hurriedly to pay a long-planned visit to America for the purpose of learning something about the schools and colleges there.

I am to start from Liverpool on Saturday the 27th., and am going to take with me a girl whom you will perhaps hardly remember at Qu: College:—indeed I think she was after your time,—Isabel Bain.

Dear Lucy,

I should like exceedingly to see you if it were possible before sailing for America, and your letter has made me wish more than ever to do so.

If I found it just possible to come to you for one day and night, would you think it worth while to have me? I do not know what the possibilities are,—are you in the town?—or would it be an undertaking to get to you from the station? Would it upset you all terribly if I came and went at unearthly hours as I might have to do?

I should like to see you exceedingly, and I should like very much to see your husband,—if my coming in such a rush and making such a fuss wouldn’t make him hate me.

Thank you very much for your photograph. There are no decent ones of me, but I will see if I can find you up one of the least bad.”

“I was so sadly selfish and engrossed about America the few hours you were here, that I must write a line to tell you how grateful I feel for all your kindness to Sophy, and how thankful I am that she has such a friend to consult with in this hour of need. I hope you did not suffer for the way in which you were plagued here: it really was very hard: though I quite believe you don’t think so.

Tuesday. Sophy’s letter has just come, and I do indeed need your prayers and sympathy. The wrench it is to me to have her go is indescribable, but I hope and believe my view will be more reasonable as time goes on. Any way, I know I shall have strength to bear. It is quite a panic, and I feel as if I must run away from it. Yet I would not prevent it if I could. I should have been very thankful for an older companion....

I ought not to plague you, her good kind friend.

May God bless you and all dear to you.

I hope to write you a less selfish letter another time. I am hardly myself now. Is it not curious,—I have such a prejudice against Americans that I hardly ever will read a book describing American manners. I hate descriptions of low life.”

“I think Daddy has a terror of only your bleached bones(!) being found, if you went about without a companion.”

“After I had done writing to you, we were summoned by a cry of ‘Icebergs!’ and up we ran to see a bright white light on the horizon, just visible, right on our track. Soon another came in sight and it was really grand the next hour. The evening hardly beginning to close in, but the cold intense, yet so beautiful.... On went the ship, tearing on to the icebergs, that grew whiter and larger every minute,—great cliffs of white rearing themselves out of the waves that beat into spray at their base,—looking so strong and grim and beautiful.”

“Oh, dear, How they turned on the tap, and talked right on end when they got near politics, only pausing to wonder at our ‘ignorance’ in England (that being, of course, the only source of difference of opinion with them). Finally, after listening with the utmost patience indefinitely—only devoutly wishing to kick over the table—I got mentally [sic] collared by Miss Peabody with an accusation of being ‘still incredulous’, to which I replied very frankly, that ‘certainly till I heard both sides I could form no definite opinion.’

Emerson was refreshing after the rest, inasmuch as, after speaking, he would allow you to answer.... A Miss Elizabeth Hoar told me she had seen Carlyle in London in 1862, and that he had said to her,—‘So you’re quarrelling out there? Why don’t you let the Southerners go to the devil with their niggers if they like, and you go to Heaven with your virtues if you can?’ Rather sensible, I thought,—from one point of view at any rate.”

“Concord. Monday 14th June. [1865.]

Dear Miss Blake,

I am sorry to be so very slow in sending you the address of Mr. Fields’ good farmer in the White Mountains region. It is Selden C. Willey, Compton Village, 6 miles from Plymouth, New Hampshire. I looked for it immediately on my return from Mrs. Mann’s, but could not find it, and now today have stumbled on it in looking for something else. Tis probable that you may have seen Mr. Fields himself before this time. When I have found my right correspondent at Oberlin, I shall hope to bring you my letter in person.

Miss Blake.”

“Everyone most wonderfully kind and helpful to us personally—lots of offers of introductions, etc. That nice Dr. Sewall very anxious that I should not tire myself out and ‘get sick’. By the bye one really can converse with her, I think.”

“My dear Miss Blake,

As usual this evening I enjoyed your society so much that I forgot to say half that I wanted to....

If you call on Mr. Emerson today, I think you had better call in the afternoon, as he told me he was engaged Wednesday and Saturday forenoons.

Don’t have any neuralgia when you come to the Hospital today, or I may want to try my Electromagnetic machine on your face. I have not seen Dr. Zakrzewska yet, but I want you to come early.

“We saw Miss Crocker the other day,—late Mathematical professor at Antioch,—and she impressed me extremely with her quiet dignity and wisdom, and her tremendous Mathematics,—I should so like to study under her some day. I felt like an uppish dwarf beside some strong quiet giant.”

“By the way that wonderful astronomer, Maria Mitchell, whom I told you we were going to see, is a very nice woman—grand and able and strong and kindly.... She is to be a professor at Poughkeepsie, and, if we go there, I shall certainly hope to learn of her,—though I did not know that Astronomy would ever have come into my life. Any way it will be a great pleasure to know such a woman.”

“Sat for a couple of hours in Dr. Sewall’s dispensary this morning. Some 36 cases heard and helped more or less. Some coming with bright faces,—‘So much better, Doctor,’—some in pain enough, poor souls. Dr. Sewall with such a kindly ready sympathy, and such clear firm treatment for them all. Certainly the right woman in the right place, except in as far as she herself gets to look sadly fagged and tired sometimes.”

Darling Mother,—I don’t think I shall be able to write by the next mail, as we are going for a few days’ excursion round the mountains, so I must send you off now as long a letter as I can manage, telling you what we have been doing just lately.

First and foremost, I have been coming in useful as ‘teamster’, in Yankee parlance, having been chiefly employed in driving my neighbours all about the country lately. You would have laughed, I think, had you seen my ‘span’ (pair of horses) the other day,—one brown, pretty high,—the other mouse coloured and some three inches lower, the most delightful variety prevailing in the harnessing and general appearance of the two. Behind these beauties came six of us in a big rough country ‘wagon’, all of painted wood,—two big seats fixed in a sort of open cart.

We went through such a ford,—the Penningewassett River, and (when the horses didn’t bite each other) we got on grandly....”grandly....”

“You haven’t the least idea what that word ‘woods’ means,—in England there are just a few acres of carefully preserved trees and ‘no trespassers allowed’. Here you plunge into a vast forest, miles and miles every way,—lucky if you can find a path at all, else guiding yourself by sun and stream and taking hours and hours to get a mile or two,—yet all through so grand, so green, and so delicious! If you could just have been with us yesterday! Every few minutes we found some great tree fallen across our path, or some black bog of decayed cedar or pine,—oh, the scents of those!—perfectly delicious;—and then round we had to go, creeping, jumping or gliding round the obstruction. Then we would come to some little clearing, and catch such views of the mountains we were shut in with,—then on again and hardly see daylight through the dense trees. And such mosses, such ferns, such berries!

Then over the river somehow from rock to rock, and such a scramble up among the cascades which came leaping down like liquid silver in the sunlight, and such pools we did so want to bathe in, and had to [refrain] for lack of time and towels! They called the distance 2½ or 3 miles, but we took just 3 hours to get there,—and then coming back pretty sharply in about half the time. The only grief to me was—what perhaps you will hardly sympathize in—that we didn’t come across any bear. There are a good many left in the woods and one hears every now and then of their being met, but they are getting few, and they are proportionately timid and modest, running off full speed if they see you. Wouldn’t it have been fun to see one?...

I think hardly anything strikes an Englisher more than the no-value of wood here. Over the water it’s half high treason to hurt a tree;—here, if you want a napkin-ring, you strip the bark off the first birch you come to and make a lot; or, if you take it into your head, set fire to the woods anywhere and have a bonfire of a dozen trees, and no one says a word. We have seen woods on fire over and over again, and no one says more than,—‘Oh, somebody’s fired the wood’; and the odd thing is it doesn’t seem to spread as one would expect.

One comes continually to clearings full of blackened stumps not yet grubbed up,—the beginning of a garden or house place perhaps. I want to see a great big forest fire some day,—and I only wish I might see a prairie on fire too; only that is said to be horribly dangerous. It is so funny to hear here, as when I was asking about a certain road (from St. Louis to California), ‘Yes, it’s the shortest, but the Indians are cross just now and have been scalping a lot of people there’!

Well, darling, we had such a drive home by starlight last night, and all enjoyed our day hugely. When we got in I suppose I walked slightly lame or something, for my greeting was,—‘I guess you’re tired, an’t you? You’re kind o’ waggling’!”

Dr. Sewall is resident Physician, and is always asking us to spend jolly evenings there,—or to join them in going to theatres, etc. Yesterday we made an expedition in the evening to a famous place for ice-cream, 8 of us there were—4 M.D.s (one of whom is a splendid surgeon,—the first female surgeon I have heard of) two students and we two. After the ices we went back to the Hospital, and played a most ridiculous game of cards called ‘Muggins’, keeping us in roars of laughter half the time. Then Dr. Tyng (the surgeon) sang, and, among other things gave us a specimen of the ‘Shaker’ singing—with its very peculiar religious dance,—have you heard about the Shakers? I hope to see them and then I will tell you.

But can’t you understand how refreshing it is to slip into the bright life of all these working people—working hard all day, and then so ready for fun when work’s over? It reminds me of the full colour and life of the old London times when all we working women were together.”

“Sept. 9th. Went over to Concord, Mass. by 11 a.m. train. At the station found Waldo Emerson just fetching his wife and friends. I spoke to him and he very cordially asked us to ‘take our dinner’ with him. We accepted, first paying a visit to Mrs. Horace Mann and Miss Peabody. Mrs. Mann gave me a letter to Mr. Pennel (her nephew) at St. Louis, whither I am advised to go after Oberlin and Antioch perhaps. Poughkeepsie we must visit later, by wish of the President, Dr. Raymond.

Went on to Emerson’s to dinner. Was received by one of the daughters, Ellen,—simple and kindly, the ‘housekeeper’, I should think—and shown into a room with several people.... About 3 p.m. dinner served, more English-wise than most, though with a new Irish maid for waiter, who looked anxiously to ‘Ellen’ for orders. Another daughter, Edith (about to be married) and a son, Edward. They had sherry on the table, which I have only seen at the Rogers’ besides,... Pears and grapes,—partly the queer sage grapes with tarry flavour,—on a pretty basket, large and shallow.

Mr. Emerson struck me as having one of the sweetest expressions I have ever seen on a man’s mouth. He was very kind in offering help. We talked besides a little about Swedenborg, for whom he seemed to have some admiration. ‘To be read as one reads a poet’s ideas,—not critically,’ he said, and spoke of the pre-inspiration works on science, etc., as really valuable.

Mrs. Emerson talked a little about ‘women’s questions’, female franchise, etc.—and spoke of the wonderful blinding power of habit,—as in slavery question,—looking to Christianity in its advance to set all to rights.

I remarked that few had done more harm to the cause than St. Paul by some of his words. She replied very truly that the fault lay rather in those who would rigidly apply such words and consider them binding out of all connection of time and place.”place.”

“Speaking a little to an old schoolfellow of Emerson’s he told me it was hard for anyone to say what Emerson’s opinions were. I said I had heard of him as a pantheist; he said at any rate he was one of the best of men and had been from boyhood up.”

My dear Lucy,

I congratulate you with all my heart on the birth of your little son! I think by this time you will have forgotten all doubts and difficulties, and all but pleasant feelings of responsibility, in your great content, have you not? God very seldom sends us either duties or blessings without showing us how to fulfil and enjoy and use them, and I do not doubt but you will have found in your own case all sorts of new powers and instincts develop with the need of them, and will have by this time a pretty definite idea ‘What to do with a baby’—Is it not so?...

I wish there existed a visual telegraph (if such a phrase may be coined) and that I could give you a glimpse of the scene I have in front of me, and which is continually stealing my eyes from my paper. No less than Niagara in its full glory!—and what that glory is I don’t think any but eyes can tell. I have seen a good deal of beauty and grandeur in my life, in Great Britain, Italy, Switzerland, etc., but I think never anything so wonderfully, bewitchingly, grandly beautifullybeautifully as this. People talk of being disappointed in Niagara, but I think it can only be because, for the first moment, the enormous width of the Falls (900 feet in one case, 2000 in the other,—separated by an island) prevents their recognizing their height as well, or else they have not got the right natures to admire with! (and I think that last is oftener the case than people think).

It gives one most wonderfully the feeling of power and immensity,—the sort of feeling that was [expressed] long ago, ‘When I consider the work of Thy fingers, what is man that Thou are mindful of him?’—and yet the feeling of infinite beauty and harmony too. Before leaving we go under the Falls, and into the ‘Cave of the Winds’ behind a vast curtain of water, and that I think must give one almost more strongly still the impression of might and vastness. It is very little use to talk about it any more, I wish you could see it!

Thank you very much for writing to my Mother about A. I hope she will get away from her present uncomfortable place,—it would give me great pleasure if she came to you. Only I warn you I shall claim her some day!

Goodbye, dear child. With all good wishes for you and yours, I am ever

“Dear Tom,

Many thanks for your birthday letter. Though they came rather late, I got quite a budget at last.

I quite agree that you ought to come and see America,—both its people and its scenery. It’s a queer study in all ways, one finds so much to like and respect, and so much that one is inclined to laugh at. People are certainly less tied and bound by the chain of ‘on dit’, on this side the water, and that tells more for good than for evil, I think; but on the other hand it lets people who are so inclined fall into overgrown eccentricities, and set at nought to an alarming extent all rules of grammar and etiquette when they don’t suit. In fact I have not found more than three or four Americans altogether who talk what we should consider cultivated English, or behave as if they had been in what we call cultivated society. They’ll pick their teeth while they talk to you (so will the shopmen—‘store clerks’, if you please,—while they serve you) spit within an inch of you, eat things in the streets while walking with you, perhaps whistle and sing ditto; talk about what they ‘had ought to do’, say they should ‘admire to do so and so for you’ or ask if they shall ‘turn out the tea,’ etc. And all this from men who have been through College, and women who know more Mathematics, Latin, Greek and Philosophy than I dare think about. In fact there’s a very curious contrast in the much higher level of learning and the much lower level of outward signs of refinement in American as compared with English averages.

I’m afraid that while we may have some few hundreds better educated,—more ‘elegant scholars’—than any in America, we must confess that there is here a very much higher percentage of fairly well read and well educated people than with us. I notice this specially among the girls—as to the men I know less. But almost all girls here have studied a good deal things few English girls go much into—specially Mathematics and natural science.

Then I am sure no one ought to speak more highly than I of American kindness and hospitality,—I am very much afraid few foreigners would have found in England such a welcome as I met with here. People were so cordially kind in helping me in all sorts of ways.... There seems to me much less of the spirit of ‘pride of office,’ etc., much more readiness to admit one everywhere to see everything, and to be ready to help without standing too much on one’s dignity. I found this specially in the case of Dr. Hill, President of Harvard University, the first in America—and the same in the case of the presidents of the colleges for both sexes, Oberlin, Hillsdale, and Antioch.

I don’t know whether you will care for all these results of my observations, but your mention of America and wish to see it drew them out.

As to politics, I knew very little about them before I came, and had a faint sort of prejudice in favour of the South, believing the North to be very insincere about slavery, etc. I now think that the Anti-slavery cry has been used most shamelessly for private and political ends by some, but that there is at the heart of Yankeedom a strong true heart beating earnestly in favour of liberty for negroes as well as whites, and that there are and have been very many most sincerely bent on very unselfish ends, and a great deal of real patriotism (on both sides probably) evolved by the war.

I am chiefly with some of the very best of the Anti-slavery people. The Sewalls used to shelter escaped negroes when to do so was a penal offence.

I saw Lecky’s Rationalism (which ought rather to be called the History of Reasonableness) before I left England, but only read part of it. I first found it on Miss Cobbe’s table, and liked it very much. I don’t know of any great American books lately,—they pirate almost everything English.

I think the English here must be feeling pretty badly about Jamaican affairs,—I am. They say the French troops are certainly to evacuate Mexico now....

I hope Hetty got thanked for her note a little while ago,—this letter is meant as much for her as for you, though I forgot to begin it so. Love to the bairns. I suppose I shall scarcely know them when I get back.

“It’s very amusing, dear, to learn to write and make up prescriptions so easily,—I shall be up to the doctors in future you see! I have just been making one up for myself under the doctor’s directions, to my great amusement,— ... and precious nasty it is!

It’s a great comfort to be of some sort of use to these people who are so frightfully overworked just now.... Besides being apothecary, I’m general secretary,—write all the business letters (which the doctor hates) and post up the hospital records of cases, etc.; and besides this I requested to be and got appointed what I call ‘chaplain’ with discretionary powers. The only people who visit in the hospital (besides friends at visiting hours) are the Lady Managers, each of whom has a month on duty, and besides that Mr. Barnard comes and holds a short service and preaches every Sunday afternoon. So I thought that the patients would like some reading, etc., sometimes, and Dr. Sewall gave me leave to do all I liked.... You can’t think how pleased they were all of them, and how heartily they asked me to come again, which I shall do pretty often.”

“At present I am so exceedingly content in my quaint pleasant quarters in the midst of so new a working world, that I hardly feel the need of anything beyond; and I do greatly want quiet and rest to ‘recuperate’ as the new word goes. I can’t tell you when I have found so much chance of rest of mind and quiet interest in things wholly unconnected with the old pain,—not for years, I am sure, and I have ready to hand just as much work as I feel able for, and yet no strain on me to do it if I am not able. I can’t tell you the pleasure it gives one simply to see Dr. Sewall in her hospital and especially among her poor patients. She is such a true Healer;—so infinitely compassionate and sympathetic, with blue eyes sometimes quite full of sorrow for the people’s pain, yet such strong firm hand and will to remedy even through pain. I say a dozen times a day,—‘Were I not a teacher, I would be a doctor’—if I could.

(Nov. 27th.) This hospital life is simply charming. So busy, so simple, so quaint and so interesting! I am entering more and more fully into it daily, and finding more and more nooks which I can fill ... sometimes giving mechanical aid in operations where they want an extra hand, etc.

Darling, one very unexpected result is coming out of this new life which I embraced simply for its rest and comfort,—I find myself getting desperately in love with medicine as a science and as an art, to an extent I could not have believed possible. I always associated so much that is repulsive and nasty with it in my mind, but I find that one really loses all sense of that in close contact,—that the beauty of nature’s arrangements and of art’s contrivances absorb one’s mind from everything less pleasant, and I find myself saying to myself a dozen times a day that, did I not feel my life devoted to another object, I would be a doctor straightway. As it is, I mean to use all the time I have in gaining all I can, by observation (for which one so rarely has such a chance) even more than by study, though I find myself devouring all sorts of medical works too, and am quite amazed to find how far even in this little time I am able to understand to a certain extent all sorts of things going on around me, and how very interesting they all become in the new light.... Of course one has access to an enormous medical library here, and the junior doctors are all as ready to help or show me all I want as possible. I in my turn do all I can to take extra work which I can do off their hands. Today the hospital note-book was handed over to me, and I went round with the physicians taking down directions for food, medicines, etc., and then making up the latter and taking them to the wards: all of which was very little for me to do, and very interesting, but a great deal saved for the over-worked junior doctor of the wards. I am really a great deal stronger and healthier than I have been for a long time.”

“Nov. 27th. We get up at 6.30 a.m.,—breakfast at 7, then go round the wards with the doctors, then I make up the hospital medicines and see what drugs need to be ordered into the dispensary. The Dispensary opens at 9, or two days in the week at 10, and on Mondays and Thursdays (Dr. Sewall’s days) I am there all the morning, making up prescriptions as fast as she writes them (two of us generally have our hands full, but sometimes I am alone), and very often we have not got through our work when the dinner-bell rings at 1 p.m. Dr. Sewall always has an enormous number of patients—from 60 to 70, and if I go down into the Dispensary waiting-room I get seized on so eagerly,—‘Is Dr. Sewall here herself?’ as she is occasionally obliged to be absent part of the time.

I think anyone who passed a couple of mornings in this dispensary would go away pretty well convinced of the enormous advantage of women doctors; and one sees daily how the poor women feel it by the crowds that come on the four days in the week when the lady physicians are in charge, and the handful that comes on the two days when a man presides.... They say that they have cases again and again of long-standing diseases which the women have borne rather than go to a man with their troubles,—and I don’t wonder at it.”

15th.15th.I have just begun to have a little Sunday service in the wards where there was none before. Dr. Sewall is very good in letting me make such plans if I like, and comes herself to the service. Of course we have a very mixed multitude, but I think we manage to worship our ‘Father in Heaven’ and look forward to the ‘One fold’ some day, when neither ‘Jerusalem nor this mountain’ shall be the vital thing.”

“(Dec. 19th.) My chaplain’s work has rather fallen into abeyance now from the crush of other things,—the only thing I do regularly being the Sunday service, writing a weekly sermon for which, by the bye, is not to be omitted in one’s list of work. It’s all but impossible to find any printed ones one could read,—one needs to be so absolutely non-doctrinal and non-combative; and besides the doctors and people will come to hear mine when they’d think twice about anything else.

The young surgeon I told you about has a splendid voice, and last Sunday she brought a sort of large accordion and played all our hymn tunes, so we are getting quite grand. Wouldn’t you like, darling, to peep in at us and see all our busy doings?—I wish you could.”

My dear Baby, I cannot sleep for thinking of the rude speeches I made to you this evening. I am so sorry that I said them, but at the same time I could not help it,—the whole service and the going to church of most all the people there was such a farce that it roused the devil in my nature.

Besides all this, my Baby answered me so sweetly and truly that it did me good to make her talk, and raised my faith in human goodness which was getting almost extinguished by that man’s sermon. If I ever get into such a disagreeable mood again, and say ugly things to tease you, you must give me a good moral box on the ear so as to bring me to my senses.

I do not believe that going to church is good for me.

Don’t think me foolish for writing this, and don’t let anything I said today trouble you, but be as good to me as you have been.”

“Dear old Charlie,—Please keep the enclosed very secret till the morning of May 12th.

Get a grand plant of some sort—full of blossom, geranium or fuchsia or something,—any price up to 5s.—and put the letter in its leaves on Mother’s plate at breakfast. Mind you get a glorious plant....

“Our rooms did get so prettily decorated,—Dr. Sewall is clever that way,—and I took holly round to all the wards that everybody might have some bits to look at. We had quite a rush of babies just then—four born on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.—When we were going round the wards on Christmas Day Dr. Sewall ordered of course ‘light diet’ for the new Mothers,—so I said laughingly to console them, ‘Well, I guessed the babies were worth losing a dinner for, weren’t they?’ ‘Humph!’ says one of the Mothers, ‘a good dinner’s worth more to poor folks!’

To tell the truth I was too much taken aback to reflect what a sensible woman she was!—What would you have said, dear?

Darling, I come more and more to the conclusion that anyone who wishes to preserve intact all romantic ideas about ‘Mother’s love,’ etc., had better not live in a Lying-in Hospital. It’s a grand and blessed thing when it does come, but that isn’t always. We had two of the babies born here found deserted in the streets a few days ago,—the day after their mothers were discharged.”

“I have given up my Sunday service, or at least have resigned it into the hands of a minister who already had a service in the medical wards. I found it very hard to find time to prepare properly for it, and sometimes it tried my nerves very much, and besides it got to be a great weight upon me in the way of responsibility and absolute honesty in what I said. Things seem so very un-clear to my own mind that it rather weighs upon me and worries me to be trying to say much about them to others. Perhaps this state may just pass away again, but in the meantime I like best to ‘be true to every honest thought’ and, till I’m sure, to be silent.

Much love to Daddy and Carry, and such a lot of kisses for my darling.

“June 18th. How thoughts and plans and possibilities rush upon me! The opening of the bar to women here,—Mr. Sewall’s wish for a female pupil. ‘Ah,’ as I said to L.E.S. last night, ‘if I had been an American, I believe I should not have doubted to be a lawyer.’ She thinks one should be, if one has the powers and will.

Yes, but is the ‘dedication’ and vocation of years nothing? Have I believed rightly or wrongly that God meant me to do something for teaching,—and that in England,—to the almost certain exclusion of all other life-work? Rightly, I think.

Then, again, the ministry. What seems to draw me so irresistibly that way? Is it pride or wish of note, or is it vocation? Is it partly Dr. Arnold’s belief that Headmaster ought also to be chaplain?...

One seems at crossways,—‘the tide’ perhaps. Well, look,—and surely the kindly Light will lead.”

“July 2nd. Very nice these people are,” she writes in her diary, “and very nice Mrs. Rogers’ deep clear interest about the poor and wicked,—refuges, etc.

Yet is there not in them the sort of un-religiousness which half jars on one in Unitarians? I wonder why. I hope I shan’t get into it. ‘More of reverence in us dwell.’ Yet so difficult in throwing off old bonds of sentiment not to lose something of the real feeling,—and, as Miss Cobbe says, if our religion is not a synthesis of all the good and beauty we know, we are less, not more, by rejecting errors.”

“A new psychical study in the shape of Mrs. F., who ‘can believe in Providence but not in God,’ and who ‘means to say that there is absolute right and wrong, but not good and bad people. People were born with certain notions and acted accordingly; they did the best they could and could do no more.’

Mr. F. allowing and accepting the consequence that men differed no more from brutes than by finer organization, no more than the elephant from the fish! It is really good to contrast opposite extremes of thought,—it gives one a certain sense of stability and reality to have to defend one’s castle on both sides, and so to feel sure that it is one’s own at least....

Talking of struggle as the only root of good, I quoted ‘perfect through suffering,’ and spoke of my belief in Christ’s struggle in those 30 years as the only possible root of his accordance of will with God’s.

July 16th. Curious how the things most living to me are just simple absurdities to another. Talking of tombstones, Mrs. H. doesn’t like them, as preventing the dead rising—in idea. Mrs. F.—‘Well, you don’t expect them to, do you?’ (as a sort of reductio ad absurdum). ‘Certainly I do: the Bible says so.’ ‘Oh—aw—ah!’ with such a face,—‘if I thought so, I’d take to Banting at once.’”

“Suggestion to read the prayer for fair weather,—‘Lor, sir,—not a bit of good with the wind in this quarter.’”

“How reading of any spiritual conflict—even such an ‘Ébauche’ as in Agnes of Sorrento—rouses one’s whole nature in a sort of enthusiasm of longing and half prophecy!...

Sometimes I feel such intense sympathy and pity for Christ because of his very deification. That after spending his whole life to learn and tell men about his Father, he should find them, after his death, trying to set him up himself to obscure that Father,—making God a foil to Christ!”

“To realize more and more that my life will be one—for years if not to the end—of struggle and perhaps obloquy, certainly outcasting from the synagogue,—struggle theological and social: and will it even succeed at last? Yes, surely,—inasmuch as Robertson says how to fall in the gap is success,—to be one of the conquering army, if not of the conquerors.”conquerors.”

“July 30th. A very interesting talk with the Fs. ... trying hard to show Mrs. F., who longs so to believe in a loving God, ‘Thou wouldst not seek me, hadst thou not found me,’—and that to long is almost to believe. Also to show her that Christ’s Christianity is a strong true manly thing,—that what she deprecates is the letter not the spirit, and that her willingness to live, and yet fear to die, without Christianity is of the essence of Calvinism.

With him, still more interesting, (except that one pities and longs to help her) about origin of evil, free will, etc. I arguing that God could not give men the possibility of virtue without the possibility of evil,—he arguing a higher state where evil not possible. I say—then you exclude the idea of goodness from God.

With some effort cleared ideas so far as to detect the ‘undistributed middle term,’ to distinguish between the possibility of evil and the wish toward evil. Saying that the very truth we prized in Unitarianism was that it said ‘Christ, if God, was no example’ and that Christ’s very goodness consisted in that he had the possibility of evil and no wish for evil.

Illustrating with May forbidden sugar, in a room with and without it. In one case unable to disobey, in the other restrained from the wish to disobey.

The two, confused in one, being absolute opposites.

Is this all part of my training ‘for the ministry’? Please God. One does so gain a clearness never, one trusts, to be lost.

He asked me tonight if I did not find I had a clearness of thought and language very rare; and she said I was the first person who had made her feel the intense reality of the invisible and long after it. Please God, a prophecy.

I said I had won through infinite struggle—almost ‘to blood’—a certainty to which the visibility of the outer was nothing. And, please God, it is deeply true.”

“I have such a conviction of infinite struggle and contest in the future,—yet please God, of earnest, on-pressing struggle, and in the end, victory and Rest....

Oh, dear, the ‘religious’ people and their effects!—very nearly making L. E. S. hate the name. So far from all good being ‘in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ’ or rather in God’s, there is actually room for the reverse to be said;—not wholly truly, I trust though. But she said, ‘If I want help for those poor things in or out of hospital, I never go near the pious people. I have and I know them. Go to atheists, and you are never refused.’

Oh, dear!”

“I am wonderfully unsettled and uneasy somehow.... I do believe this terrible sort of logical doubt of Theism that enters in—not un-faith, but a failure of the abiding surety—an entrance of the admission how possibly reasonable Atheism may be—hurts horribly.

And then isn’t the whole world void?

Oh for the ‘I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not‘!—and doubtless one has it,—both in ’Neither pray I for these alone,’ and also in those who live and love one, Mother and Octa....

L.’s absence of sympathy weighs heavily. Hitherto all my friends have met me here,—she does not. ‘All the help she ever got, she got from herself and her will.’ Not from the Bible or hymns, etc. She calls herself a theist, but it seems to me to run close to practical atheism....”atheism....”

“Oct. 29th. She is so good! Told her something of today’s pain, she so sympathizing and good! Believed that the struggle was part of the sequence of early training and later reaction into ‘wider faith’—what many had to go through one time or another. I spoke of herself,—asked her what practical difference she would find if an atheist. ‘Not much generally,’ she thought, but in trouble she did pray. She couldn’t help it, and believed it was good, and when her friends died she was happier. ‘When she thought of it, she felt very sure about God, but very seldom did stop to think. She was sure her first duty was her work, etc. and then she had small time and sense left.

I said lives not continually lived as seeing Him who is invisible would be worth but little; she said Then her’s was so, and many others. So I retracted hastily. ‘At least mine would be.’

Perhaps her’s is actually higher and more childlike. ‘He will care for my soul,’^[39] as it were.”

“Nov. 13th. Looking at p. 253, ‘the Ministry?’, I ask whether the sort of spiritual speechlessness—almost deadness—is not perhaps a merciful answer to that question. Clearly I can’t preach now.”

“Nov. 24th. This temptation to medicine is pretty strong in some ways, both as to present study and future life.... But ‘not each on all’ come the claims,—this is surely already responded to, and will surely grow without me.

I feel as if my work would not [how little she knew!] as if, at least, it was given me to do and needed most of all my labour.

So ’Traveller, hold thy cloak’!

While it was identical with life interests and labour am I to claim ‘vocation,’ and then when others open, forsake it?

‘Shalt not excel.’”

“Nov. 25th. I cannot but believe that if God enables me ... to do my work as I have believed and planned it, it will do wider, deeper good for England than the addition of one woman doctor can.^[40]

And then if I say,—‘Ah, but see how my theology will impede me!—well, would you have everyone give up working but those who hold the popular views?—is it not just those whose views have changed who need to work and justify them, and not hide light under a bushel at call of indolence or cowardice? You know that you believe in the horrible harm of leaving education to Calvinists, downtreading and hardening earth round the root,—that you believe in children being taught ‘the two commandments’ and no more,—and yet, because you would so teach them, you half shrink from the battle through which you must do it.

L. E. S. says, ‘If you feel you can and wish to be a doctor, you ought.’ Ah, but I can do the other too. And if it is only selfish or worldly considerations that sway you to medicine—if it is the interest or the power or the success, mainly or wholly—if it is the difficulties present or future that make you half yearn to turn from the other—surely these are no reasons.

Surely, having presented ourselves, our souls and bodies, a reasonable sacrifice, these things no longer enter in.”

“The Medicine fascinates me.... If I resume teaching, it will be grand to have an M.D. for head of College: if not, why Medicine is a ‘good work,’ and if I am led up to it, it may be mine after all.

But won’t E.G. be cross?”

“(Jan. 21st. 1866.) And, darling, do you know that the doctor has such a splendid temper, and is so infinitely gentle, that I really believe she is improving mine,—because I’m absolutely ashamed to be cross to anybody so good. Suppose I come home angelic, dear?”

“(Feb. 6th.) Yes, dear, I mean to be a thoroughly good nurse for you at any rate, if ever you need me; as to ‘Doctor too,’ I can’t say. I should like to be enough of one at least to know how to save you some pain. I listen to and learn specially everything that I think can ever help my darling,—it would be grand to be of some use and comfort to her if she was ill.”

My dear Lucy,

I hope you are quite prepared to renew your invitation to me for next summer, for I’m beginning to think seriously of my visit home, and I want very much to see you! I say my ‘visit’ for I have been so well and strong since I came to America, and have found so much to interest me, that I think it very likely I may come back here after seeing all my home folks....

I am so glad to hear that you have got Alice with you, and expect to like her. She is a real friend of mine, and a very true and valuable one.... I only hope you will let her take as good care of you as she used to do of me....

Whenever you feel energetic enough to enjoy a chat by pen and paper, I shall be very pleased to hear of your doings. Pray tell me all about the Baby—of course the most wonderful of his kind—and be sure, dear child, that I shall care very much to hear and know about everything that concerns you.

Please give the enclosed lines to A. I shall enjoin her to feed you up no end, and whenever we do meet, be sure I shall ask if you let yourself be taken proper and sensible care of. I believe in food and rest as just the best doctors in creation—with all my new medical lights!

Goodbye, dear child. With every good wish for you in the New Year, I am,

Dearest,

Your welcome letter arrived a day or two before the 17th., but dear Mother kept it back till the morning. Thanks for all your good wishes. One thing you can always do,—pray for me,—and that, I trust, you will do daily. I have constant faith in prayer simply offered up to our heavenly Father through the one mediator between God and man. I believe it never fails.

I am rejoiced you are so quiet at Boston, and have employment that interests you, but even that work will hurt you, remember, if you have too much of it. You want rest, dearest child, and only light agreeable work on your hands. I wish I could see Dr. Sewall, to give her a Father’s heartfelt thanks for all her loving kindness to you. She is indeed an invaluable friend. If I am to see her, she must come to Europe, for I shall never cross the Atlantic.... I am very glad you are so well, and your letters are so cheery that they are a great pleasure.

We are all, thank God, fairly well, and are to have Tom and his wife, and four (I think) of the children here after Christmas. On Thursday last, at 2 a.m. their house was on fire, and till 2.30 a.m. he did not expect to save the house; and had there been a high wind, nothing could have saved it probably. Mercifully it was a still night and everything went well. Two engines were on the spot rapidly, in perfect order,—plenty of water close by, and the superintendent very active and intelligent. No crowd, and the entrances kept clear by respectable known men: and by three o’clock every spark was out.

The children were sent off rapidly to the school-house, and all five (baby being put elsewhere) put in Miss Temple’s bed! Nobody has been hurt,—a few colds and that seems all. Our God be praised. How different it might have been!

“Jan. 29th. 1866.... You were very good and very right not to attempt to enter yet as a student....

I had much rather know you well and happy there than see you ill and know you worried here. If they would only have the Cable, I think Boston no distance. I should certainly like the Cable,—but I don’t hear a word about it. Couldn’t you apply to Government?”

“Feb. 20th. I hope your medical education is progressing, and that you don’t addle your brains. I shall expect you to make something on the way home by your medical knowledge.”

“Mar. 5th. It is such a repose and joy to me to hear of your being occupied so usefully and happily, and feeling comparatively well, though I suspect sometimes my little one is a wee overdone.”

“I am very glad you find things and people pleasant in America,” writes Mrs. Unwin. “I hope they won’t be so nice that they will tempt you to stay there very long, for I shall be very glad when I can think of you again without that great sea between us. I do so want a long talk with you about no end of things. I don’t think I ever wanted you more than when I was ill.”

“If I told you of the estimate in which I hold the purpose to which you are devoting your life, you would suspect me of flattery, so I abstain; but, barring all that, your friends in England are in great need of you, and I think it is very horrid that you should leave them all, to whom you would be of infinite service, on God knows what outlandish errand. They all grudge you to Boston entirely, so pray be quick and come back.”

“Most people are much more in favour of Medicine than I expected,” she writes, “except Miss Garrett, who thinks me not specially suited, and E. S. M., who thinks it indecent of unmarried women knowing all about these things.”

“July 8th. Sunday. ‘Taller,’ say Laurence, Mother and self. ‘More firmly knit,’ say do. ‘Muscles like iron, as if rowing all morning and prize-fighting all afternoon,’ says Nigger.

Well done America and L. E. S.!—bless her.”her.”

“I really feel quite well satisfied with the increase in my practice, and if it continues to increase for the next two years as well, we shall be able to take a fine house and live in style. I cannot tell you how much pleasure I get out of anticipating our house-keeping. When I am too tired to do anything, I lay on the sofa and plan and plan and think what a good time we are going to have, and am as happy as a cricket.”

“An English teacher, whose special avocations enabled her to gain prompt attention from American instructors, and qualified her to detect the true worth and significance of the facts brought under her notice, Miss Jex-Blake has written a sensible and entertaining book upon an important subject; and, while we thank her for some valuable information, we venture to thank her also for the very agreeable manner in which she imparts it.”

“Redolent with common sense and practical suggestions,” said The Stationer.

Gentlemen,

Finding it impossible to obtain elsewhere in New England a thoroughly competent medical education, we hereby request permission to enter the Harvard Medical School on the same terms and under the same conditions as other students, there being, as we understand, no university statute to the contrary.

On applying for tickets for the course, we were informed by the Dean of the Medical Faculty that he and his coadjutors were unable to grant them to us in consequence of some previous action taken by the corporation, to whom now therefore we make request to remove any such existing disability. In full faith in the words recently spoken with reference to the University of Harvard,—‘American colleges are not cloisters for the education of a few persons, but seats of learning whose hospitable doors should be always open to every seeker after knowledge’—we place our petition in your hands and subscribe ourselves,

To the President and Fellows of the University of Harvard.”

My dear Madam,

After consultation with the faculty of the Medical College, the corporation direct me to inform you and Miss Dimock that there is no provision for the education of women in any department of this university.

Neither the corporation nor the faculty wish to express any opinion as to the right or expediency of the medical education of women, but simply to state the fact that in our school no provision for that purpose has been made, or is at present contemplated.

Miss S. Jex-Blake.”

“The Beginning of the End. A correspondence between the President and two lady applicants for admission to the Medical School was published some days since in the ‘Boston Advertiser.’ We understand that the friends of female education have no notion of resting satisfied with their first rebuff; and that prominent Alumni of Boston are already taking measures for the prolonged agitation of the question.”

“I should not only be willing, but I should be much pleased, to lecture to any number of ladies for whom we can find accommodation in the anatomical lecture room, always provided that any special subject which seemed not adapted for an audience of both sexes should be delivered to the male students alone.”

“My dear Professor,

Miss Blake, who will hand you this note, wishes me to say that I am strongly in favour of the admission of persons of her sex at the Medical College. As such is my decided opinion, I write very willingly.

“All which ends in ... smoke!”

“Those wise men of Gotham at the Eye and Ear think it ‘the kindest and most gentlemanly thing’ to shut us out after all!”

“Dr.“Dr. A. ‘not afraid of responsibility, of course’—only—he’d rather not admit us till other people do”!

Dear Madam,

The surgeons of this Infirmary are, at the same time, members of the Massachusetts Medical Society, and are bound to respect the opinion of its Councillors. And in view of the recent action of that Board, we are of opinion that we cannot continue to allow female students to attend our cliniques. Ungracious as is the task, we therefore feel compelled to ask you to suspend your visits.

We have no hesitation in adding that our intercourse with yourself and companions has been throughout most pleasant to us personally.

Miss Sophia Jex-Blake.”

“July 5th. Rest yesterday, but altogether weighed down yesterday and today with the fear and horror of this irritability which seems so fatally unconquerable,” she writes in her diary.

Darling Mother,

As I have a spare hour, I may as well use it to chat a little to you about the oddities of our journey.

I wrote to you from Newbury where we stayed one night at the Merrimac House,—having slept the previous night at the Agawam House, Ipswich (!)—both Indian names, of course. Yesterday we drove (as I told you at the end of my last letter) from Newbury port to Portsmouth, and were uncertain when I wrote whether to stay or go farther. It had been a hot day, but, after posting your letter, a violent rainstorm came up, deluging the streets for about 20 minutes about 5½ p.m.

After it was over, everything looked so cool and clear that Dr. Sewall was anxious to get on, though I was a little afraid of the heavy roads. So we set out soon after six, and had a most delicious drive at first. By-and-bye, however, we came to terribly wet clay roads and could only go at a walk. Our horse got tired and it began to get dark, and we found that the distance to go was even longer than we had been told.

It’s hard for you to understand the sort of society in these country places,—no gentry and no peasantry—almost all small farmers doing their own work and owning house and land, with some education but no polish. We stopped at two or three houses, scattered at wide intervals,—and enquired for lodgings, but with no success till after dark when we got to a house belonging to a widow woman who informed us we could come in and have bed and food, but there was ‘no one in the house but her,—no one for the horse.’ However, I was perfectly ready to act groom, so in we drove to such a queer loose sort of yard, where I unharnessed by very uncertain lantern light, and then the doctor and I had a tremendous job getting our phaeton into a queer coach-house up a sort of hillock!

Then the lantern led on to the ‘barn,’ which (here as usual) meant also stable, and soon I found myself plunging in the dark through soft masses which proved to be long wet grass, leading my horse by the halter. Then up among big loose stones, and up a step more than 1½ foot high into a barn so low that my horse all but hit his head. Then over some boards set edgewise to divide off stalls ... the good woman being amazed at my venturing in ‘with the horse’!

Then a queer hunt in the half darkness for a pail for water and wooden box for Indian meal (which, stirred with water, often replaces oats here), and then to bed, tired enough!

This morning I groomed the horse, and, so doing, found a stone in his foot, fed him, and we between us washed the carriage. You may tell Daddy I had no idea what hard work it was before! We washed a long while at it, and somehow it wouldn’t look quite clean at last.

(N.B. Why will water dry muddy on to a carriage?)

Then we drove on again some distance and found a place for dinner,—one of the big boarding-houses like what I was in at Compton,—and then on again. Dr. Sewall began to get tired when we were still 5 or 6 miles from our next point, Kennebunk,—and seeing a notice on a bye-road, ‘Atlantic House 3/4 mile’—we drove down,—found a charming inn almost on the sands, close to the Atlantic,—fresh and bright and airy, and settled here for the night. If you only knew what my afflictions are in American country inns,—I have hardly seen decent food in one since I left Boston—you may imagine my satisfaction at getting here the best supper I have had yet,—excellent fresh fish, lobsters, etc., and currants, and nice bread, and milk. Altogether the best table we’ve found yet.

It sounds natural, too, to hear the roar of the Atlantic as I write,—only it seems sometimes to murmur, ‘Over the sea!’

But then it always makes me feel nearer home to see the actual water which is the only thing between us,—of which you at Brighton see but another part.

Wednesday.... We have spent the day quietly here, and shall very likely drive to Portland in one day tomorrow,—30 miles is not much for a rested horse. He has not been out today, except for a short drive on the broad smooth sands which stretch for miles here.

It is deliciously cool here by the ocean,—Dr. Sewall says ‘cold,’ and borrows my old blue jacket.

It is very pleasant and restful after Boston. If Portland is hot, we may return here for a few days on our way back.

Goodbye, darling. Yours lovingly,

Darling Mother,

Here we are staying again on the very verge of the Atlantic, having found Portland more gay than restful, and desiring some perfect quiet before we get home again.

Your letter of July 25th has been forwarded to me with a long one from Carry, and one from an old schoolfellow of mine who had seen and liked my book, and so bethought herself to write to me and say so. She is a governess now.

I should like to see that review in the Pall Mall,—perhaps some of you will send it to me,—and any others of which you hear....

“August 11th. Sunday evening. We have been spending the afternoon ‘camping out’ in the midst of some woods (Haywards Heath fashion) letting our horse graze and enjoying the cool and quiet. We have one more day here and then go on towards home, and expect to get there on Friday. Soon after—in September probably—we shall make another attempt, aided by Mr. Loring, and, I hope, by Prof. Rogers (have you seen him?) to get into Harvard or to get some advantages out of them; and I suppose on our success will depend a good deal what we do in the winter....

The Doctor begs me to send her love. I do hope you may know her by this time next year. Don’t you?

Love to all. Tell Carry I’ll write soon in answer to hers.

“I think what you say is true about the difficulties of ‘Joint Education’ in England,” she writes to her brother in answer to a criticism of her book. “Myself, I care very little about it if both sexes can somehow get all the education they want or wish for.”

Gentlemen,

Having during the past year been granted access to the clinical advantages of the Massachusetts General Hospital, but finding it impossible anywhere in New England to obtain adequate theoretical instruction in Medicine, we now earnestly entreat you to reconsider the subject of the admission of women to the lectures at Harvard Medical School,—such admission being, as we understand, forbidden by no past or present statute of the University.

We do not wish to enter on the vexed question of the capability or non-capability of women for the practice of Medicine, as we believe that time and experience only can furnish its true answer, but we now present our urgent petition that some opportunity may be afforded us for the thorough study of the medical science and art, that we may be granted at least some of the advantages that are not denied to every man, and allowed to show whether we are or are not worthy to make use of them.

We are willing, Gentlemen, to submit to any required examination, to qualify ourselves according to any given standard, to furnish any personal references, and to abide by any restrictions and regulations which may seem proper to the Corporation or to the Faculty.

Several of the Professors having expressed their personal willingness to allow us to attend their lectures, we earnestly request that the Corporation will authorize our admission to those classes into which the respective Professors do not object to receive us, and that, in any case where the Professors does so object, we may be allowed to receive private instruction from some medical gentleman approved by the Faculty, whose lectures shall in our case be held equivalent to those given to the College classes in the same subject.”

“Fighting on for Harvard with a sort of dull persistency,” she records in her diary in March 1868, “expecting another answer from the Corporation on the 11th.

Well, having been in Mass. Hospital for 8 months is something. With all my dull atheism, I do believe somehow the Best will be,—if not this, another. ‘And so far have brought me—to put me to shame’?”

“I suppose it isn’t till the whole world—and oneself—breaks away under one that one does know what rubbish one is made of,—‘dust and ashes.... And what fine things I started with! Sir Launfal^[45] and gilded armour, etc. To conquer all the giants and beam Christian charity everywhere.

I believe old folks do ‘know young folks to be fools.’

A nice result at near 28—Chaos!—with a possible sawbones in futuro!”

“Jan. 21st. 1868. ‘Quid sum miser tunc dicturus’!

Eight and twenty!—‘and a sinner!’”

Darling Mother

Such a sleigh ride as we had yesterday I hope you’ll never have,—and indeed I don’t care about repeating the dose myself! I drove the doctor eight or nine miles in a pelting snow-storm, partly across open country, long bridges and marshes, etc., the thermometer somewhere about 10° or 15°, a good deal of wind, which always makes it feel much colder, and the sharp crystals of snow cutting into our faces and eyes like so many pin points and causing actual pain. Towards the end I found it rather hard to see,—some white things seemed to get in front of my eyes;—what do you think they were? Solid icicles hanging from all my eye-lashes on the side exposed to the wind,—frozen together into three or four solid little balls as big as small peas, and partly freezing the lids together! When I got in I called Eliza to see them,—you should have heard her ‘Gracious goodness!’

Even sealskin gloves fail one in such stormy cold,—one’s hands freeze and have to be thawed out as regards sensation several times in a drive! So we carry hot bottles to do it with, and Dr. Sewall laughed at the figure I cut yesterday, driving with one hand, the other grasping a big two-quart bottle upright on my lap, and my head bent on one side like a lapwing’s to see out of the one eye that wasn’t frozen up!

She herself offered to drive again and again, but speed was my object, and I always make the horse go half as fast again as she does. He did gallantly yesterday,—the roads and streets were clear, and we spun over the white frozen surface at eight or ten miles an hour.

When it is not actually snowing, sleighing is very exhilarating,—the horse has a light load and is generally in good spirits,—sleigh-bells jangling merrily, etc.”

... A few days ago one of the women who had been confined here was fetched home by her husband, and with him came a rather big dog of the setter or lurcher kind, I think, or rather a cross on one of them. The folks went away, and so did the dog, but in half an hour he was back again, scratching at the Hospital door. He was fetched again by the man and again ran back, no one having, so far as I know, petted or enticed him at all. Then he was refused admission or turned out on the street, and when his master came again for him I believe he found him on the street; but in the evening there came a scratching at our hall door—not the Hospital,—and in walked the same dog again! I knew nothing of the previous story, but remembered having seen him with the man who came to our house to see Dr. Sewall, so I took him in. From that moment he attached himself to me, so that he follows every step I take, and whines at any door I enter without him. As the man didn’t come again for him, I drove to his house this morning,—the dog following close to the sleigh all the way (some two miles), and when he got there the dog greeted his master certainly, but directly I rose to go, up he jumped after me. So, as his choice seemed to be made, I offered the man $5 (15s. 6d.) for him, and now am undisputed owner of my loyal friend!

It is rather queer, for I had been wishing for a dog of my own, and, though he is not a great beauty, he has a nice face, is very obedient, clean, and, I think, intelligent,—though Dr. Sewall professes to disdain him for being ‘so big’!—and then one can’t help liking even a dog who so plainly declares ‘elective affinity.’”^[46]

“I am glad to understand that you have bought, not the first bit of ground, but another near it. I hope Carry will soon send me some idea of her plans, though, of course, we can’t build for some months. I enclose a very rough sketch of what would be my own idea of a schoolroom with gallery at one end and with classroom at the other,—and besides the class room a sort of lobby with second entrance and with stairs leading to the rooms above for Anne. The porch to have places to hang hats, etc., as also under the gallery (as at Hastings).

I can’t remember about dimensions, though I have a sort of idea that, when we spoke of building before, we planned our schoolroom at 18 ft. by 28, and 10 ft. or 11 ft. high, the class room to be perhaps 11 ft. by 8.

Ask Carry to see how that agrees with the standard space for 100 children.”

“March 28th. Saturday. Began dissecting with Dr. Moseley ... oh, dear, isn’t it good to have some real teaching at last!

By-the-bye, the Blackwells think they could get us into Bellevue if Harvard refuses. New York for 3 winters? Shall I bring Alice or what? They want English ladies to come and make a class, and offer to receive them into the Infirmary. (But English ladies are not given to dine in kitchens on poor kitchen fare, etc.)

Is my old idea ever to work out by O. H. studying medicine? Wouldn’t she be a good doctor!

By-the-bye, challenged by the Blackwells as ‘to whose management (in re English Female University) would inspire me with £1000 confidence,’ I say, O. H., Miss M., etc.”

“I am glad that you find out (as I told you you would) that I did do one or two little things while you wondered how I spent my time. I wish, however, that you had someone to do them now,—I am afraid you will get so tired. I shall ask Eliza if you eat properly. Tell her that I mean to write to her next time.

The little book of your bills is on my shelf in my secretary,—a small account book. Don’t muddle the things in looking for it. Be sure and put down in it all the bills you send out. Can’t you get Miss Call to write them for you? She really can write (unusual in the N.E.H.)....

Tell me if Eliza does nicely,—tell her I asked after her and her housekeeping and Robert.

I am glad that my son Turk behaves better as he grows older. Give him an extra bone with my blessing.”

“So living in New York is neither easy nor cheap, you see, ... I hardly know how I shall manage if I go to a medical college this winter, and have to pay all lecture expenses, etc., besides living,—for women have to incur extra expense in all sorts of ways, because they can’t share the arrangements of some sorts made for men....

... while studying, Miss Garrett had, I know, to spend lots of money,—paying £50 for a single course of lectures which the men got (in class) for £5 each.

When there was an idea of my taking the Manchester College, Daddy was willing to advance me £1000 or £2000 for the start, instead of part of the income he allowed me;—do you think he would be willing to do some such thing now? I suppose it is hard for you at home who don’t realize exactly the hard battle we are fighting (especially to get into the good medical colleges) to see how very important it is not to be stopped from seizing every bit of advantage obtainable for want of money. And it unfortunately happens that most of the women who are studying Medicine really cannot get money even when most necessary.

When I began I had no idea of going into any of this,—but somehow one gets talking to Mother of what is uppermost in one’s mind sometimes.

And I know Mother wants to hear all my bothers and perplexities.

Much love, darling, to Daddy and Carry.

“April 12th. Notwithstanding all the discomforts in the way of board, I have been gaining greatly by my stay here. I have had a better opportunity for dissecting, etc., than ever before, and besides have learnt a good deal at the daily medical lessons which take place at Dr. Blackwell’s every afternoon. If I am to be a doctor at all, I mean to be a thoroughly good one, and now that I have gone so far in medical study, I mean to go right through, unless some very unforeseen obstacle comes. And then the future may decide what use my knowledge may come to. I sometimes think that a woman doctor could find very useful work in teaching Anatomy and Physiology,—or at least something of them—to women and girls, who are apt to be so terribly ignorant of them.

Lately I have been spending an hour or so of an evening (for rest) in hearing a nice ‘daughter of the house’ read French to me, she having very few chances of help, poor child.”

“April 11th.... Within three weeks of leaving for home,—what balance sheet?

Nearly three years in America.

In that time complete health regained,—probably better than ever before,—real strength and power of study. A profession opening calmly and clearly before me,—its sciences already ‘as trees walking,’ becoming clearer daily. The edge of pain all gone. But with it vivid faith and life in many directions—belief in all invisible and much reaching after the heroic. A sort of passive ‘quo fata vocant,’—a sort of ceasing to demand the very good or very true, perhaps,—a sort of coldbloodedness that is not peace,—a nil admirari that only ‘will do for it.’ My vocation given up or laid aside, and I quietly learning knowledge chiefly because it is power,—hardly yet shaping out any end; but what does come, selfish enough. Professor of Anatomy? Surgeon? Doctor-Teacher?

Sometimes a sharp pain rushes across,—‘Ah, if Mother shouldn’t live to see me succeed!’—She does seem woven in with the heartstrings,—my old darling who cannot forget.

All this health and new life—more than ever hoped for—comes mediately from L.E.S.”

“Comes—mediately—from L.E.S.”!

Dearest,

It is so much in my head and heart, and in the dear Mother’s, to have the privilege of presenting your most valued friend with some memento of her visit, that I beg you to use all your influence, and entreat Dr. Lucy Sewall to accept a carriage, or any other thing that she would value, as a remembrance of your dear Mother and myself, when she has returned home. She can little imagine how much she would please us both by doing so.

“So good, so fascinating and dainty! I haven’t had so much wide and deep talk with anyone for three years at least....

The proposal of her driving them to church ending in my doing so. Somehow the service moved me greatly. ‘Gethsemane, can I forget,’ etc....

‘What is truth?’—no jesting Pilate,—yet do I stay for an answer? Oh, dear, the certainties of p. [181], etc., and now! Yet I think the wheel is beginning to sway upwards again. Please God! Yes, surely the Ephesians stretched wise earnest hands (or may have done) to the Unknown God. ‘Strenuous souls ... to stand in the dark on the lowest stair.’”

“May 31st. Wonderful how content everyone is with my medical prospects. Daddy decides our residence (!) for Mount Street, Grosvenor Square. I say now pretty definitely,—in 4 more years England, three years study, and one of practice.

Meanwhile a quiet satisfactory holiday must have. No one can tell how many more with the old folks, and this must be what will be good to remember.”

“June 20th. Maurice’s lecture. ‘Miss Jex-Blake’s investigations in America might help much to the solution of the problem’ [of mixed education, presumably]. And after the lecture he thanked me for my book. I’m cock a hoop now!”

“June 24th. On the whole my resolve well kept till now,—one month’s success in no (or few and light) ‘cataracts and breaks.’ Somehow I have a solemn sort of feeling about it this year, as if it would be the last with one or other.”

“Ah, darling,” she writes to her Mother on the voyage, “it was such hard work to say Goodbye last week! Do you know for one little minute I wondered whether after all the price wasn’t too hard to pay, and whether after all I shouldn’t give up doctor, hospital, M.D. and all and just stay with the old Mother.”Mother.”

“Sept. 29th. Boston. I am sorry to say that Harvard has refused me again, so I must go to New York!—Ah, well,—‘all things are less dreadful than they seem’!”

“With regard to your winter’s work, we will discuss it when you come. We shall be glad to meet your views in any way we can.

There are other matters connected with the school itself we shall be glad to talk over with you, one in particular, which I think would interest you, and in which, from your exceptional position in the class, I think you could help us in our organisation; but I shall leave its discussion till you come.

I hope you will allow time to get thoroughly settled and through with the trouble of it before November.”

“Oct. 23rd. Friday. Came to New York.... Went 137 Avenue for a week to hunt for rooms,—oh, dear!... At length decided on 222 East Tenth [Street]—two back parlours and two above,—gas and all $55. Alice arrived on Monday 26th.”

Darling Mother,

The term begins tomorrow, and I am glad to say that Alice and I have just succeeded in getting things into some sort of order in time. Besides laying down carpets, buying a stove and kitchen pots and pans, a bedstead and chairs, etc., I have been providing winter stores in American fashion, and yesterday bought two barrels of potatoes, 30 lbs. of butter, etc. etc., to say nothing of flour and wine. My money is running terribly low,—I have only about £20 left when this month’s rent is paid; but then most of my things are bought now, and besides I can borrow from Dr. Sewall if needful. Besides the Hospital owes me about £10 or £11 for duties paid, so I can probably get on till my next quarter comes....

I know Mother will be thinking of me on my own hook in New York. This last week has been a pretty hard time, but now things are falling into shape. Alice has been invaluable. I know that having her, with the proper food, will just make all the difference to me of being able to work on all winter without breaking down. The Blackwells are very pleasant, and, though I have no special friends here, I shall be so busy and cosy that I expect to get on capitally.

I am afraid the poor little Doctor gets the worst of it,—she will really miss my help in many ways, besides mutual loss of company,—and I am sadly afraid she won’t take due care of herself. I can’t tell you and Daddy how thankful I am that he has given her that charming little carriage,—it is such a relief to my mind to know that she will not be forced to drive herself when weary and half frozen: and I believe it will make a real difference in her health.

Her Father was very pleased with it, though I believe he made very careful enquiries as to whether the Doctor was sure Daddy ‘could afford to give her such a splendid present.’ Of course he didn’t ask me that, but I took an opportunity of telling him that I knew you both felt that the carriage represented only a small part of your feeling of real gratitude to her for all the good she has done me medically and otherwise. Wasn’t I right?...”right?...”

Yesterday was the opening of our College, at which Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell made a speech which I was asked to report for the chief medical paper here. I have done so, and will send you the paragraph when it appears....

My rooms are not far from the College and other places where I have to go daily, and altogether I may consider myself well off. I have managed to buy as little furniture as possible, having brought carpets from Boston, and having hired two tables, a bed and a stove, from the landlady here. I have not yet bought more than £12 worth, and I mean to try to get on with as little more as possible.

I am very glad to hear of Miss Garrett’s good news. I shall send her note on to the Doctor. I know it will please her so much.”

Darling Mother,

I enclose two letters which you can read and forward respectivelyrespectively to ‘Mr. H. 69 Jermyn Street, S.W.’ and to ‘Sam. Laurence, Esq. 6 Wells Street, W.’ Don’t transpose them!

I have now got fairly settled in my new abode, and am really very comfortable in it,—thanks to Alice. Our rooms are so situated that we can keep quite to ourselves,—having even a back staircase almost of our own,—and we get on famously. My daily routine is pretty regular throughout the week. I go to the dissecting room at 9 a.m. and work till about 11.15. At 11.30 comes a lecture on Anatomy and Physiology on alternate days,—and I get home to lunch a little before one. Alice always has things ready and nice for me, and I rest for about half an hour after lunch, before going to the afternoon lectures which begin at 2 p.m. and continue (except on Saturday) till 5,—three lectures of an hour each. I have just put in a petition to Dr. Emily Blackwell (who manages everything and is very nice) for five minutes space between each two lectures, for opening windows and a walk up and down the corridors,—to which she instantly assented as desirable.

Pleasant as it was to live with the Doctor, and extremely grateful as I feel for the very great good she has done me, I confess now to rather enjoying a completely independent nest once more,—for a while at least. You see it was inevitable that at Boston everything had to be shaped to suit Hospital work, and that was sometimes a nuisance.

I can study and write and read in a much more thoroughly undisturbed way here than I could there,—in fact it would have been simply impossible while living there to work as I am doing now,—there were so very many inevitable interruptions.

And yet, but for my two years there, I never could have been strong enough for my work here,—I believe that I never was so strong in my life before—isn’t that grand?”

Darling Mother,

Yesterday your letter (containing the one from the Times agent) was brought to me in the dissecting-room, and wasn’t I pleased to get it!... It is quaint sometimes to think of the different scenes in which letters are written and read! I am really very much grieved to hear of Daddy’s having been so ill,—I did not understand fully before how serious his attack had been. I comfort myself, however, with hoping that while the news is coming here, he is really getting better daily. Give him much love from me and a big kiss on each cheek.... I hope my old lady takes care of herself. Do for my sake.

Darling, I ought sooner to have answered your enquiries about the Colleges, etc. Harvard (Boston) is a University for men, and we couldn’t get in there, because they wouldn’t have any women. I was anxious to go there because the degree is considered a valuable one. Here in New York the College I am at is just opened by Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell for women only,—or at least only women attend it, though I believe men would be admitted.

The teachers are 9 in number,—7 men and 2 women professors, as you will see by the circular. In the actual classes we are all women students; in going to hospitals, dispensaries, etc., we mix with the men. The teaching is really very good and I am getting on capitally.

Capitally in every way indeed....

I see it is now a little past nine, and I shall soon be off to bed and sleep like a top till about 6 a.m.

I have never worked so hard in my life (for a continuance), and I have never been in such good health. I am absolutely well, (and what a blessing that is after all these years!) I eat and walk and sleep perfectly, have no pains and aches, and the sweetest of tempers!

I only wish Mother could peep in and see me in my little den!—dog and Alice and all.

With very much love, darling, to Daddy and Carry,

“Saturday. Nov. 14th. [Diary.] In sober fact I get on grandly. Better and stronger than I have ever been.”

“Monday, Nov. 16th. Oh, why, why didn’t they telegraph at any rate? If people only would do as they are asked! Carry’s note just come after Chemistry. ‘I believe if you could start from New York today, you would have no prospect whatever of seeing him alive’.”

“Sunday, Nov. 29th. Brighton. Reached home about 10.30 a.m. yesterday (after a rush through Dublin, Cork, etc.) to find that he had died ten days even before that letter arrived. Nov. 6th. 9.50 a.m.”

“He had not risen. I went and lay on the bed by him and kissed him, and he told me how they had enjoyed having me,—‘never had so pleasant a summer together,’ etc.

I said I had tried hard and yet I hadn’t fully succeeded. I was sorry I had been cross sometimes. ‘No, no,’ he said, stopping me, ‘I hadn’t failed,—there was nothing to forgive.’ And then I told him I would try and do them credit in my profession, and then he took my hands in his and prayed for me. And then I kissed him again and got off the bed,—but he (very unlike him) sprang out after me and embraced me again and again,—and so we parted very lovingly,—I telling him, I think, that ‘next time’ it should be all right. And so, please God, it shall,—if there is a God and a ‘next time’!”

“If you don’t come back to America,” she said, “you won’t give up the work. You will open the profession to women in England.”