More and more, as she looked back on her own school life from the vantage-ground of a year at Queen’s College, she felt how much the education of girls might be improved. On the last night of the year she writes:
“In this year my idea of work in the cause of education has developed itself into that of a resident College of the Holy Trinity. Heaven knows if ever to be carried out. If good,—yes, doubtless,—if not, God will raise up better. Little ‘religious’ as I fear I am, I do feel this thoroughly....
‘And may the New Year cherish
All the hopes that now are bright.’
Such a happy loving Goodnight to and from Daddy and Mummy. Very happy I am tonight.
‘And once more ere thou perish,
Old Year, Good night! Good night!’”
CHAPTER VII
FRIENDSHIP
The great remain children to the last, and in this respect S. J.-B. was essentially one of the great. To the end of her life, for those who knew her well, she could be a delightful child. But it was about the time we are considering—the age of 20 to 21—that she may be said to have become a woman, or, more truly, to have put on her manhood. She was too busy at the time to describe or analyze in her diary the change that was taking place—“Oh,” she says, “the little space of time and paper! The mighty space of events ‘unheard’!”—she was in no way self-conscious about it; but there are indications, like straws on the surface of the water, that show in what direction the current was setting. One sees that she was beginning to look at life freshly and at first hand, that the old traditional dogmatism was falling away from her views of religion, of social questions, of the relation between the sexes. To be sure this old husk was being replaced by the even more acrid dogmatism of youth; but in that very acridity one feels the promise of growth, of the ripe wisdom of later years.
As far back as March 1859 one finds the following significant passage: