“Emily A. Shirreff.”
The visit to Mrs. Hodgson during the holidays did much to comfort them both, and to strengthen the bond that never relaxed to the end. The very latest pleasure of Miss Buss’ life, in the bright interval that preceded the fatal illness, was a visit at Myra from this loved and loving friend.
CHAPTER V.
REST.
“One who never turned his back, but marched straightforward; Never doubted clouds would break; Never deemed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph; Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, Sleep to wake!”
R. Browning.
Strangers might easily receive the impression that Miss Buss was one of those happy persons who, being blessed with an iron constitution, do not know what illness means. This was, however, very far from the fact; for with a temperament so intensely sensitive, she was in reality one of the women who can be as ill as they choose to be; and a good deal of her apparent vigour lay in the strength of the will which elected not to be ill. “Great minds have wills, where feeble ones have wishes.” It was just because she so well knew what could be done by self-control that she exacted so much self-control from all around her. From experience she knew how largely the body may be made the instrument of the spirit, and for much of her time she kept going by sheer force of that indomitable will.
It was because she carried this effort too far, in exacting from her woman’s strength the work that might have contented several strong men, that she grew old before her time, and finally broke down, paying the price of overstrain for some years before the end came.
All that we can hear of her early life gives the impression of perfect temper, of unfailing composure, of unbroken self-command. It is only in later years, when her great work was completed, that we find the nervous irritability that is the price paid for over-work, or, more truly, of over-worry, since it is not work that kills, but worry.
So much did all around her rely on her strength and vigour that it is with surprise we note the recurrence in her letters of such passages as these, even so many years ago:—