(6th of the 5th mo.) What indolence and neglect! from 21st of last mo. not a line written in my journal! Oh for power to be more diligent in future; but how soon, through life, have I been weary in well doing! To-day, felt solemnly and deeply engaged, in secret prayer, at meeting. Yesterday —— and —— to dinner; how little either of them, poor things, seemed to think of their great change! though one is 76, the other 73. Dress, cards, the world! But let me look to my own blindness and worldliness, and not censure theirs; and to me the voice has spoken, “Come,” and how have I obeyed it? Alas! Visited a sick friend and a poor lost girl, just released from jail; read Rutherford’s letters all the afternoon: wrote for votes for a charity-boy; read to the servants, and to bed, not so dissatisfied as usual with my day’s work; may I be humbled, and enabled to rise early to my work to-morrow, and may the labours of my pen be blest!
(3rd day, 7th.) Rose early; to Infant School; little boys idle and ignorant in my class! one, however, good and diligent; then called on A. B., found her low for her dear sister’s death, but enjoyed my call. Went to the jail, have hopes of one woman; the other is sorry for detection, not for sin; but these are early times yet; her temper seems bad, i.e. if expression is to be trusted; two calls on my way home. Tired, but not displeased with my day. * * *
The Journal here breaks off, not to be renewed (as a note, added at the close, tells us) until 1829, “in another book.” We shall close this chapter with an extract from a letter written in the autumn of this year, to her friends at Northrepps Cottage.
* * * How every day teems with eventful changes; F. and C., dear ones, have to inhabit a new abode; but death, death is the change of changes! How trumpery, how unimportant, seem all changes compared to that; and how that changes even the very look of existence to many of us! Sometimes it is almost unbearable to me; and I could run into the next room to look for what I cannot find, and cannot see again, and which yet seems blooming beside me, and cheerful, and living, and likely to live! and then I think how little I prized him while I had him with me! Oh! you know some of these feelings, and can deeply sympathize with me in what a child alone can feel. How deeply have I entered into the feelings of my estimable friend T. R., (an only child,) on the loss of his mother, who lived with him; I expressed my feelings as follows:—
At length, then, the tenderest of mothers is gone!
Her smile, her love-accents, can glad thee no more;
That once cheerful chamber is silent and lone,
And, for thee, all a child’s precious duties are o’er.
Her welcome at morning, her blessing at night,
No longer the crown of thy comforts can be;