She hears the Reverend William Rounceville Alger's paper on the "Blessed Life." "Very spiritual and in a way edifying; but marred by what I should call 'mixed metaphysic.' One goes beyond his paper to feel a deep sympathy with him, a man of intense intellectual impulse, in following which he undergoes a sort of martyrdom; while yet he does not seem to me to hit the plain, practical truth so much as one might wish. He is an estray between Western and Eastern thought, inclining a good deal, though not exclusively, to the latter."
She goes to conferences of women preachers, to peace meetings; to jubilee meetings, in honor of Queen Victoria; she conducts services at the Home for Intemperate Women, and thinks it was a good time.
She "bites into" her paper on Aristophanes, "with a very aching head"; finishes it, delivers it at Concord before the School of Philosophy.
"Before I began, I sent this one word to Davidson,[105] eleison. This because it seemed as if he might resent my assuming to speak at all of the great comedian. He seemed, however, to like what I said, and in the discussion which followed, he took part with me, against Sanborn, who accuses Aristophanes of having always lent his wit to the service of the old aristocratic party. Returned to Boston and took train for Weirs, New Hampshire, where arrived more dead than alive."
She is at Newport now, and there are tender notes of pleasure with the Hall grandchildren, of "reading and prayers" with them on Sunday, of picnics and sailing parties.
Still, in dreams, she calls back the lost daughter; still records with anxious care each visionary word and gesture.
"Dreamed this morning of Charles Sumner and dearest Julia. She was talking to me; part of the time reclining on a sort of lounge. I said to some one, 'This is our own dear Julia, feel how warm she is.'... I think I said something about our wanting to see her oftener. She said pathetically, 'Can't you talk of me?' I said, 'We do, darling.' 'Not very often,' I think was her reply. Then she seemed to come very near me, and I said to her, 'Darling, do they let you come here as often as you want to?' She said, 'Not quite.' I asked why, and she answered almost inaudibly, 'They are afraid of my troubling people.' I stirred and woke; but the dear vision remains with me, almost calling me across the silent sea."
She writes innumerable letters; date and address of each is carefully noted, and now and then an abstract of her words.
"The bane of all representative action is that the spur of personal ambition will carry people further than larger and more generous considerations of good are apt to do. So the mean-hearted and ambitious are always forward in politics; while those who believe in great principles are perhaps too much inclined to let the principles do all the work...."
The following extracts hurry the year to its close:—