241 Beacon Street, April 18, 1896.
... If you go to Russia, be careful to go as Mrs. John Elliott, not as Maud Howe Elliott. Your name is probably known there as one of the friends of "Free Russia," and you might be subjected to some annoyance in consequence. You had better make acquaintance with our minister, whoever he may be. The Russians seem now to have joined hands with the Turks. If the American missionaries can only be got rid of, Russia, it is said, will take Armenia under her so-called protection, and will compel all Christians to join the Greek Church. There is so much spying in Russia that you will have to be very careful what you talk about. I rather hope you will not go, for a dynamite country is especially dangerous in times of great public excitement, which the time of the coronation cannot fail to be....
"April 20. F. J. Garrison called and made me an offer, on the part of Houghton, Mifflin & Company, that they should publish my 'Reminiscences.'... I accepted, but named a year as the shortest time possible for me to get such a book ready...."
As a matter of fact, it took three years for her to complete the "Reminiscences." During these years, while she made it her principal literary work, it still had to take its chance with the rest, to be laid down at the call of the hour and taken up again when the insistence of "screed" or poem was removed: this while in Boston or Newport. During the Roman winter, soon to be described, she wrote steadily day by day; but here she must still work at disadvantage, having no access to journals or papers, depending on memory alone.
"May 7. Question: Cannot we follow up the Parliament of Religions by a Pan-Christian Association? I will try to write about this."
"May 19. Had sought much for light, or a leading thought about what I ought to do for Armenia.... Wrote fully to Senator Hoar, asking his opinion about my going abroad and whether I could have any official support."
"May 28. Moral Education Association, 10 A.M., Tremont Temple.
"I wish to record this thought which came to me on my birthday: As for individuals, no bettering of fortunes compares in importance with the bettering of character; so among nations, no extension of territory or aggregation of wealth equals in importance the fact of moral growth. So no national loss is to be deplored in comparison with loss of moral earnestness."
"Oak Glen, June 30.... Finished this afternoon my perusal of the 'Memoir' of Mr. John Pickering. Felt myself really uplifted by it into an atmosphere of culture and scholarship, rarely attained even by the intelligent people whom we all know...."
"July 12.... I pray this morning for courage to undertake and fervor to accomplish something in behalf of Christian civilization against the tide of barbarism, which threatens to over-sweep it. This may be a magazine article; something, at any rate, which I shall try to write.
"1 P.M. Have made a pretty good beginning in this task, having writ nine pages of a screed under the heading: 'Shall the frontier of Christendom be maintained and its domain extended?'"