August 22d.
* * * How difficult it is to know one’s children well; to develop and train the characters according to their different peculiarities and requirements! * * *
Darmstadt, September 9th.
* * * I must tell you now, how very heartily and enthusiastically the whole population, high and low, received us yesterday. It was entirely spontaneous, and, as such, of course, so very pleasing. * * * I was really touched, for it rained, and yet all were so joyous—flags out, bells ringing, people bombarding us with beautiful nosegays; all the schools out, even the higher ones, the girls all dressed in white. The Kriegerverein, Louis’ old soldiers, singing, etc. In the evening all the Gesangvereine joined together and sang under our windows.
We are very glad to be at home again, and, please God, with earnest will and thought for others, we together shall in our different ways be able to live for the good of the people entrusted to our care! May God’s blessing rest on our joint endeavors to do the best, and may we meet with kindness and forbearance where we fall short of our duties.
Darmstadt, October 30th.
* * * I had to receive sixty-five ladies—amongst them my nurses—and some doctors from here and other towns, all belonging to my Nursing Society, which has now existed ten years. Then I was at the opening of my Industrial Girls’ School, where girls from all parts of the country come, and which is a great success. I started it two years ago. On Sunday I took the children to hear the Sunday-school, which interested them very much.
I have been doing too much lately, though, and my nerves are beginning to feel the strain, for sleep and appetite are no longer good. Too much is demanded of one; and I have to do with so many things. It is more than my strength can stand in the long run. * * *
December 13th.
For to-morrow, as ever, my tenderest sympathy! Time shows but more and more what we all lost in beloved Papa; and the older I grow, the more people I know, the more the remembrance of him shines bright as a star of purer lustre than any I have ever known. May but a small share of his light fall on some of us, who have remained so far beneath him, so little worthy of such a father! We can but admire, reverence, long to imitate, and yet not approach near to what he was.