"Dear E——: ... I think it is good for young people to have some variety in life. I suffered much from the want of it; and I trust that you have too much good sense and right feeling to be unreasonable in your wishes, or in any measure unfitted for the duties and enjoyments of home by the indulgence. I know it has formerly been a great trial of your patience to pass from the irresponsible position of a visitor, to the occupations and responsibilities of home. But I trust, as you grow older and look at life more and more with a clear appreciation of its use and end, you will take more and more delight in the consciousness of living for some useful object; and, despite unpleasant accompaniments, find, in using all your powers for the good of others, a pleasure beyond any to be derived from a mere indulgence of taste. We cannot, and we had certainly better not, if we could, choose our own lot in life; we know not in that matter what is best for us. It is happily under the guidance of a more perfect wisdom than we can attain, and we may rest in faith that our position in life is unquestionably the best one for us, or it would not have been appointed. Therefore, dear E., remember that He who appointed all 'knows what is in man,' and in wisdom and love adapts our trials to our wants; and the very fact that such and such things are particularly hard to bear, is a proof that we need to cultivate just those virtues which would make it easy to us to bear them."
"Most people think it as well that the young should 'fight their own battles,' as they term it, and find their own way out of their childish troubles. But I believe many a character is seriously injured by the want of aid in its petty difficulties, at that period when the right principles of action are most easily taught; they are as necessary to the right adjustment of small matters as of great.... I do not think as much as I once did of the loss of constant intercourse in the daily routine of life, in cultivating family affection. I believe family attachments are sometimes increased by occasional separation. But I do think a great deal of the loss, to a girl, of all domestic education, for the whole of that period when domestic occupations can best be learned. Of all objects in life there is none more distasteful to me than a merely literary woman; no amount of learning is a fair balance, in my mind, for the feminine graces of a true woman's character. It is not merely that she looks better, clean and tidy, or that a careful use of the needle is a preventive of waste in the use of means,—although these are considerations worth weighing. But there are internal graces connected with these external habits; and there is no higher object for a woman's life than the cultivation of those powers which make the comfort of a well-ordered household."[5]
"December 31, 1843. The last day of this most eventful year! Dear Annie, how many precious, solemn thoughts does the very writing its date suggest! In all the future years of our lives, be they many or few, no one, it now seems, can bring to us so great, so affecting a change in outward things, as this year which is just passing away. It is not only that the outward circumstances of our lives are to take a new course, because he has left us who was to us the leading and controlling spirit in all that pertained to our life in this world, but that we shall no longer feel the perpetual action of his character in the daily detail of the education of our souls....
"Your expressions of discouragement and anxiety about yourself touch me very much. I can enter fully into all your feelings, for at your age I was not only separated from the loved circle and influences of home, for a time, but I lost for ever my chief earthly dependence for aid and happiness in my mother's death. Thus, being left to myself, I was led to a self-inspection and care of my own character, which do not usually come for many years after. I know all the trials that beset one's path at your age, for I have had deep experience of them; and I can say with confidence to you, that they may all be overcome by a resolute will, united to a true spirit of humility. Not, perhaps, in one year or two; but I do know that, by the persevering use of the means which God has placed within our reach, in reliance upon and earnest seeking of the aid which he will give, we shall make progress in the Christian life, the only life which can give us any satisfaction.... Seek the truth in your own character, and see it in others. Fix for yourself a high standard of excellence, and never 'tire nor stop to rest,' until you have put yourself in the way to attain it. Stop not then; there is no stopping in this world (or in another, I believe).... Look your great difficulties full in the face; seek not to gloss them over, or find excuses for them. You have them as the means of excellence, by giving you something to do, a mode of applying Christian principle. Use them as such, and faint not....
"One thing I would suggest. You have been in the habit from earliest childhood, and I trust are still, of praying before you close your eyes to sleep. I am not sure that you have always done the same when you first awake in the morning. I know that much good may be derived from thus commencing the day with some private devotional exercise. The time given to it must of course depend upon circumstances; yet there cannot but be, under any arrangement, opportunity for at least the offering of a petition for light and strength, to meet the duties and temptations of the day on which you are entering, and a thought and resolution in regard to some particular fault to which you know you may be prone. I cannot but believe, that, when the day is so commenced, there is less danger of yielding to temptation than if no such act were performed."
One is perplexed to understand how Mrs. Ware, who neglected no duty, found time to write so much; for the letters here published are a small part of all she wrote, and scarcely any do we publish entire. The explanation is, that they were written after every thing else was done, at night, and very late in the night. It shows the strength of her frame, that she could follow this habit through life, till near the end. We suppose it to have been very rare that she was not up and at work beyond midnight. So was it particularly during the winter after Mr. Ware's death; when her great solace and chief occupation were found in reading and arranging the immense mass of his manuscripts and unfinished works. She says in December: "The sense of the uncertainty of life, which is always awakened by the circumstance of death, made me anxious to do a great deal with respect to Mr. Ware's papers, which no one could do as well as I; the day was too full of movement to allow an opportunity of doing this before evening, and I found myself night after night poring over manuscripts until twelve, one, and two o'clock, for weeks together." This is not mentioned as an example to be followed; nor is there reason to think that it is ever done with entire impunity. But the work to which she thus gave herself, through that lone winter, was one of pure and high gratification. "It was a touching employment, not melancholy. This living life over again, when all its sands have been 'diamond-sparks,' not dazzling, but reflecting the bright hues of heaven, cannot be melancholy; it is but a type of future blessedness."
But not for her own pleasure alone was this done. She had yielded to the earnest desire of all the friends of her husband, that a Memoir should be written, and many of his letters and private papers given to the public. Not, however, without long deliberation and great reluctance did she give her consent; for, as we have said in the beginning of this work, it cost a hard struggle, and even "agony," to open to the public eye that "sacred inner life" which seemed her own, and only hers. But here, as everywhere, she soon conquered all selfish feeling, and, taking the largest view of usefulness and duty, afforded every facility for a faithful exhibition of such a character. To her son she says: "I know that, if the picture of what he was is to be a true one, it must have all those beautiful lights and shadows thrown into it which come from the light of the soul; and I hope to be able so to lay aside all personal consideration, as to do what ought to be done in this regard to make the work as useful as it can be. I trust you will feel so too. In our horror of gossip, do not let us go to the other extreme, and be too external and cold." In all such relations, it was a great part of her principle and power of action, that she had entire faith in her husband's knowledge of her motives; with the added conviction, that, whatever had been his thoughts and wishes under the burden of the flesh and of disease, he was now looking only at the highest and broadest aspect, the spiritual and eternal issues of every act. Her communion with his mind seems to have been as habitual and actual as it is possible to conceive. Again and again does she refer to it, and expresses regret and pain when a doubt is raised, or a check given to the full, cordial assurance of the "fellowship of the spirit." And her enjoyment of this thought was never troubled, but rather enhanced, by the thought of another, with whom the sharer of her affections and her existence was now reunited in heaven. Distinctly does she refer to it, in writing to one of the children of those parents who were now restored to each other. "I never experienced the sense of continued union as fully as now. It may be visionary, but I know it is beneficial. Your mother and your father are as much really present with me, to my consciousness, as if Scripture had told me so, it seems to me. In his case, it is but a continuation of perfect oneness; in hers, it has always been the sense of accountableness, which has aided it."
We attempt no concealment of our wish to exhibit fully this rare and beautiful feature of a Christian's faith and love,—less rare, we would fain believe, in the reality of its existence, than in the courage that avows it. We value it, not only for its own sake, in a connection where it is needed and may be the source of peculiar happiness, but also for the evidence it affords of the power and glory of our religion. We find a letter written on the first anniversary, after Henry Ware's death, of her decease who had been the object of his earliest attachment, and whom every later change, in life and death, endeared the more. The letter was written to a child of that departed mother.
"Framingham, February 5, 1844.
"My dear John:—
"I always feel, when I get your letters, as if I wanted to sit down and write to you at once, so much have I in my mind that I wish to communicate to you, and so much do I enjoy free communication with you. You may thank your stars that I do not give way to my inclination, for you would have more prosing than you would care to read. I am tempted now to depart from my usual custom of writing only once a fortnight, because I feel so much the want of some one with whom to commune upon the subject which cannot but occupy my mind upon this day. It is the first time for seventeen years that I have not had a delightful conversation with your dear father upon the event of which it is the anniversary. I loved to hear him tell me of your mother, for it helped to strengthen the feeling which I have loved to cherish, the sense of responsibility to her in my connection with her children. And her character was so fine a one, and her early experiences so much like my own, that I always felt that I gained wisdom as well as pleasure in contemplating it....
"I have often wished I could convey to your mind, without the intervention of words, what I felt to be the tenderness of the relation in which I stood to you; for my views and feelings have always been so different from what I find to be general, that it was not to be expected that you should understand them without such communication. From the very commencement of my connection with your father, I have realized the truth of my long-cherished theory, that the strength of one affection does not interfere in the least with the strength of another; we love not one brother or sister or child the less because we have another to love; if there is any difference in the degree, it arises from other causes than number; and I know not why it should not be the same in all relations, where the soul is large enough to take so wide a range. I would thank God for this special blessing in addition, I might almost say above all others, for without it all others would have had a bitter ingredient. It has been one of the purest sources of happiness, that we could dwell together upon the memory of her who had gone, and feel an equal anxiety and interest in fulfilling her wishes towards her and our children.
"With the love of your Mother."