Feb. 16th. He went to Infirmary during Sunday visit; and went away, telling Mrs. Thorne oracularly that ‘he had seen quite enough for his purpose’.
Feb. 17th. Monday. He made a tremendous row at Managers’ Meeting. Said that the previous day he had visited the wards and ‘had never seen a more truly Christian, more truly Sabbatic sight, than the ladies at the sick-beds.’ By 10 to 6 votes in again.”
Such were the ups and downs of daily life.
The question was raised at this time of having one or more women on the School Board, and S. J.-B. took up the matter enthusiastically. It was useless to remind her that she had more than enough on her hands already. Here was a matter in which she really could serve. And a great occasion it proved. Even those who were children at the time have not forgotten the wild excitement in Edinburgh over that election, and the lift given to the whole woman movement when the two lady candidates—Miss Phoebe Blyth and Miss Flora Stevenson—appeared on the list second only to the Roman Catholic priest, who had, of course, all the suffrages of the faithful.
“You and Miss Blake must have half killed yourselves in getting a Committee with such names as you have,” Miss Blyth had written.
“If you and Miss M‘Laren had not gone in so strongly for my interests,” wrote Miss Stevenson, “I should have found myself very much lower.”
So perhaps it was worth while, for the place taken by the women on the list was a weapon of good fighting force for the future.
It was a helpful distraction too for S. J.-B. herself, and at that moment the constant pressure of unsatisfactory difficulties and worries—some few of these latter, of course, created by herself—was very wearisome. Always something trying to do, and never anything to show for it,—that was the record of her life at the time. Here is a heart cry such as one seldom gets from her now:
“Sunday, May 18th.—Oh, dear!—for some brightness and freshness and pleasure to break the long grey wait and work!—Nothing’s wrong,—I’m fairly well, and by no means unhappy. I’ve the real essentials of happiness,—love and work,—but the fruition of both seems so far away!