"I am driven to it," she says, "by a stern sense of duty. I feel its responsibilities and my own insufficiency so deeply, that I never hear the school bell with pleasure, and seldom enter the schoolroom without a sinking of the heart, a dread as of some approaching catastrophe. Oh, if I had only been developed into usefulness in early life, how much happier I should have been and would be now. From want of training, I am all slip-shod, and all I do, whether learning or teaching, is done slip-shod fashion. However, I must try and use the fag-end of me that is left, to the most advantage."
In order to do this, although sixty-one years old, she set earnestly to work to brush up her intellectual powers and qualify herself as far as possible for her position. She took French lessons daily, that she might improve her accent and learn the modern methods of teaching, and for months after she entered the Eagleswood school her reading was confined to such books as could enlighten her most on her especial work. She was rewarded by finding her interest in it constantly increasing, and she would doubtless have learned to love it, if, as she expressed it, her heart, soul, and mind had not been so nearly absorbed by the woman movement. Age and reflection had not only modified her views somewhat on this subject, but had given her a more just appreciation of the real obstacles in the way of the enfranchisement of her sex. Speaking of Horace Mann, she says:—
"He will not help the cause of woman greatly, but his efforts to educate her will do a greater work than he anticipates. Prepare woman for duty and usefulness, and she will laugh at any boundaries man may set for her. She will as naturally fall into her right position as the feather floats in the air, or the pebble sinks in the water."
And at another time she writes: "I feel more and more that woman's work is inside, that the great battle must first be fought within, and the conquest obtained over her love of admiration, her vanity, her want of moral courage, her littleness, ere she is prepared to use her rights without abusing them. Women must come into the arena with men, not to increase the number of potsherds, but to elevate the standard of right."
Her ideal of womanhood was very high, and comprehended an education so different from the usual one, that she seldom ventured to unfold it. But she longed to do something towards it, and there is no doubt that but for home duties, which she felt were paramount, she would have undertaken a true missionary work of regeneration among women, especially of the lower classes. Many sleepless nights were passed pondering upon the subject. At one time she thought of editing a paper, then of studying law, that she might sometimes be able to advise and protect the weak and defenceless of her sex. She went so far in this as to consult an eminent lawyer in Philadelphia, but was discouraged by him. Then she considered the medical profession as opening to her a door of influence and usefulness among poor women. Sarah Douglass, who was a successful medical lecturer among the colored women of Philadelphia and New York, encouraged her friend in this idea, and urged her to take a course of lectures.
"I would dearly like to do as you say," Sarah Grimké answered, "but it must not be in Philadelphia. I cannot draw a long breath there, intellectual or moral. Freedom to live as my conscience dictates, to give free utterance to my thoughts, to have contact with those who are pressing after progress and whose watchword is onward, is needful to me. In Philadelphia there is an atmosphere of repression that would destroy me. Ground to powder as I was, in the mill of bigotry and superstition, I shudder at the thought of encountering again the same suffering I went through there. Indeed, I wonder I was not altogether stultified and dried up beyond the power of revivification, when the spring came to my darkened soul after that long, long winter.... There must be something in this wide, progressive world for me to do, but I must wait patiently to see what the future has in store for me."
All this, from a woman in her sixty-second year, shows how fresh was still her interest in humanity, and how little her desires for usefulness and improvement were dampened by age. But Angelina's continued delicate health kept her from carrying out any of her plans. She could see no way of escape consistent with duty and her devotion to the children, and she cheerfully submitted to the inevitable. But she could never bring herself to be satisfied with the Association life. She had had no ideal about it, no golden dreams, but joined it because she could not be separated from those she loved, and, with singular reasoning, she put one thousand dollars into it, because, if there was to be a failure and loss, she wished to share it with her sister and brother. But she had no affinity for living together in a great hotel, and it fretted her much, also, to see Mr. and Mrs. Weld taking constantly increasing burdens upon themselves as the school increased. Her longings, for their sake, for a little quiet home, are very pathetic. But she never allowed her anxieties to affect her intercourse in the household; on the contrary, no one was more full of life and good humor than she. Her favorite maxim was: "Bravely to meet our trials is true heroism; to bear them cheerfully, an exhibition of strength and fortitude infinitely beyond trying to get rid of them."
But it is doubtful, after all, if everything else had been favorable to it, that Sarah could have brought herself to leave Angelina and the children. She says herself:—
"A separation from the darling children who have brightened a few years of my lonely and sorrowful life overwhelms me when I think of it as the probable result of any change. They seem to be the links that bind me to life, the stars that shed light on my path, the beings in whom past, present, and future enjoyments are centred, without whom existence would have no charms."
All through her letters we see that, though generally cheerful, and often even merry, there were bitter moments in this devoted woman's life, moments when all the affection with which she was surrounded failed to fill the measure of her content. The old wounds would still sometimes bleed and the heart ache for home joys all her own. Writing to Jane Smith in 1852, she says: "I chide myself that I am not happier than I am, surrounded by so many blessings, but there are times when I feel as though the sun of earthly bliss had set for me. I know not what would have become of me but for Angelina's children. They have strewed my solitary path with flowers, and gemmed my sky with stars. My heart has brooded o'er sorrows untold, until life has seemed an awful blank, humanity a cheat, and myself an outcast. Then have come the soft accents of my children's voices, and they have spoken to me so lovingly, that I have turned from my bitter thoughts and have said: 'Forgive thy poor, weak servant, Lord.'"