Oh, Lucy dear, I do think it’s too bad to be expected to go on with Medicine, and not have you to help and interest me in it. If I didn’t believe you would after all come and start me in practice when I do get through, I don’t think I should have any heart to go on at all. But we will be together again some day, old lady, won’t we? Oh, dear, I am getting so tired of living and fighting and hoping! As soon as one hopes one has got a little foothold it is all knocked away from under one!”
The letter then plunges into the question of money and accounts, which were not Dr. Sewall’s strong point.
“Poor little girl!—she has so many accounts, and I am dreadfully afraid she will get into a dreadful mess with them all! Do tell me if you got your accounts anything like straight after New York.”
Dr. Sewall was overwhelmed with work, but her letters came as fast and frequently as mails could bring them. “I do hope you do not miss me as much as I miss you,” she wrote, and again:
“I do hope this New Year that begins so sadly may not be a very hard one for you, though I fear you will have to fight hard before you can settle down at home. Do try to get some visiting at the Hospital or some medical work as soon as you can. It will do you good and your Mother too.”
But she too, when it comes to a question of “business,” relapses delightfully into the child. “Do say you are contented with me, and that I have done well.”
For three weeks S.J.-B. drifted, uncertain of her course, and then she set her sail.
“Today—after three weeks of doubt, indecision and rather negation—I was suddenly inspired to get up out of the dining-room arm-chair, walk to the Hospital, and ask Mr. Salzmann to read Medicine with me,—so Thursday and seq.—Histology!
It’s quite odd how pleased I am at the prospect of ‘shop’!”