“12 p.m. Sunday night.
Don’t chide me for writing late, Mother. I must speak to you. If I could give you an idea of the peaceful, happy evening I have had,—sending me to bed with a heart full of love and joy and thankfulness. No, nothing has changed in outer things. I have no other news. But perfect peace has come. I can hardly tell you how happy I am, Mother.
I have had such a happy, holy evening with two or three of the girls.... And God seemed to give me such wonderful power to help them, and I believe He has helped them. And in all this—I know not how, but I wake up at their departing ... to find that somehow God has rolled away my burden utterly.
I had forgotten it and myself altogether, and now I can find neither. I can hardly believe in the pain and misery of the morning, it seems a dim, far-off memory.
Is it not wonderful, Mother? Goodnight, my own darling.
Yours very very lovingly,
Sophy.
I do not know when I could so fully and entirely say, ‘I will lay me down in peace and sleep, for Thou, Lord, only makest me to dwell in safety.’[safety.’]”
Follows an undated fragment, probably written to her Mother next morning:
“—passed other quiet wayfarers, just as heavily weighted. How gentle it ought to make one,—to see how utterly ignorant one may be of sorrow at one’s elbow,—how one can only be generally tender to people, if one would escape striking down an already tottering neighbour because one does not and cannot know his needs.