"Began to teach the purser to read from notes with a leaf of music out of some periodical. Copied Baur a little—talked and heard much talk."
"April 17.... Expect to get in to-morrow, not very late, unless another contrary gale. Frigate birds and petrels yesterday—to-day, whales, blackfish, and an immense number of porpoises. Revelation cannot go beyond human consciousness.
"The Western mind has taken Christ's metaphorical illustrations literally, and his literal moral precepts metaphorically."
"April 18.... Very thankful to have got through so well so far."
As at the beginning of this chapter we took a step backward, so we must now take one forward and speak briefly of the second visit to Santo Domingo in 1874.
The Doctor's health was failing; he had suffered from the winter's cold, and longed for the warm sunshine of the beloved island. Would she go with him? he asked. She should preach to her colored folks as much as she liked.
They sailed together in the Tybee in March. After a brief visit to the capital (where Revolution had been before them, expelling the friendly Baez, and putting in his place a man opposed to the Samana Bay Company), they took up their quarters at Samana, in a little hillside cottage about a mile from the town.
Our mother writes in her Journal:—
"March 20. In Santo Domingo as glad as a child.... Went to Garcia's and foolishly bargained for the gold necklace and emerald ring I fancied the last time I was here. The necklace is for Maud."
The love of jewelry was one of the "little passions" of her whole life. Speaking once of this as her "besetting sin," she said: "It is rather respectable to have a besetting sin, as it shows one must have had an ancestor from whom it was inherited!" She enjoyed a jewel as she did a flower or a song: she loved to deck her dear ones and herself with trinkets; a jeweller's window was a thing of delight to her, not to be passed without the tribute of a pause and a glance at its treasures. Yet a purchase of this kind seldom failed to bring its retributive pang the day after.