When she reached Oak Glen in mid-June, she felt a "constant discouragement"; was lonely, and missed the cheerful converse of her club and suffrage friends. "My work seems to me to amount to nothing at all." She soon revived, and "determined to fulfil in due order all the tasks undertaken for this summer; so attacked the Kappa poem and wrote at a stretch twenty-two verses, of four lines each, which was pretty much my day's work. Read in Martineau, in J. F. C., a little Greek, and the miserable 'Les Misérables.'"
She decided to hold some conversations in the Unitarian parsonage, and wrote out the following topics for them:—
"Useful undertakings in this city as existing and needed."
"How to promote public spirit in American men and women."
"How to attain a just average estimate of our own people."
"How far is it wise to adopt the plan of universal reading for ourselves and our young people?"
"In what respects do the foreign civilizations retard, in what do they promote the progress of our own civilization?"
In August she preached to the women in Sherborn Prison, choosing a "text of cheer and uplifting: 'Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory.' Read part of Isaiah 40th. Said that I had wished to bring them some word of comfort and exhilaration. Pointed out how the Lord's Prayer begins with solemn worship and ascription, aspiring to God's Kingdom, praying for daily bread and for deliverance from temptation and all evil; at the close it rises into this joyous strain, 'Thine is the kingdom,' et cetera. Tried to show how the kingdom is God, the great providential order, before and beyond all earthly government; then the power, that of perfect wisdom and goodness, the power to know and rule all things, to be everywhere and ever present, to regulate the mighty sweep of stars and planets, and, at the same time, to take note of the poorest and smallest of us; the glory first of the visible universe, glory of the day and night, of the seasons, glory of the redeeming power of truth, glory of the inexhaustible patience, of boundless compassion and love."
She enjoyed the visit to the prison and was thankful for it.
A few days later, at a meeting in Newport, she heard a lady demand that the children of genius should be set apart from others for special education and encouragement, receiving a pension even in their early years. She demanded colleges of genius, and a retreat for people of genius. By thus fostering juvenile promise, we should produce giants and demigods.