"I, being called upon, gave the card house a tolerable shaking, and, I think, brought it down, for which several people thanked me."
Vividly as she lived in the present, the past was never far from her.
"Had in the morning at first waking a very vivid mind-picture of my sweet young mother lying dead, with two or three of us little ones standing about her. My brother Henry, two years my senior, laid his little hand upon her forehead and said: 'It is as cold as a stone,' or some such comparison. I felt strangely, this morning, the very pain and agony of that moment, preceding the tragical vision of a life in which that central point of nurture, a mother's affection and wisdom, has been wanting. The scene in my mind was only a vivid reminiscence of what actually took place, which I never forgot, but I had not felt it as I did to-day in many years."
Perhaps at heart she was always the little child who used to say to herself at night, "Now I will stretch out and make myself as long as I can, so that the robbers will think I am a grown-up person, and perhaps then they will not touch me!" "Then," she told us, "I would stretch myself out at full length, and go to sleep."
She was reading Martineau's "Study of Religion" this summer with close attention and deep interest. His writings gave her unfailing delight. His portrait hung in her room; on her desk lay always a slender volume of his "Prayers," her favorite passages marked in pencil. When Louise Chandler Moulton lay dying, the best comfort she could devise for her was the loan of this precious little volume.
The "Study of Religion" is not light reading. We find now and then: "Head threatening. Will not tackle Martineau to-day"; and again: "My head is possessed with my study of Martineau. Had a moment's realizing sense this morning of the universe as created and constantly re-created by the thought of the will of God. The phrase is common enough: the thought, vast beyond human conception."
When her head was clear, she studied the great theologian eagerly, copying many passages for more complete assimilation.
September brought "alarums and excursions."
"Awoke and sprang at once into the worry saddle."
Another Congress was coming, another "A.A.W." paper to be written, beside an opening address for the Mechanics' Fair, and "1500 words for Bok," on some aspect of the American woman.