"Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth." The poor are the
generous: the injured, the patient and loving.
All that —— said of this girl was in perfect harmony with what De Maistre says of the saint of St. Petersburg, who, almost devoured by cancer, when, asked, "Quelle est la premiere grace que vous demanderez a Dieu, ma chére enfant, lorsque vous serez devant lui?" she replied, "Je lui demanderai pour mes bienfaiteurs la grace de Paimer autant que je l'aime."
'When they were lamenting for her, "Je ne suis pas, dit elle, aussi malheureuse que vous le croyez; Dieu me fait la grace de ne peuser, qu'a lui."' * *
'Next of Edith. Tall, gaunt, hard-favored was this candidate for the American calendar; but Bonilacia might be her name. From her earliest years she had valued all she knew, only as she was to teach it again. Her highest ambition was to be the school-mistress; her recreation to dress the little ragged things, and take care of them out of school hours. She had some taste for nursing the grown-up, but this was quite subordinate to her care of the buds of the forest. Pure, perfectly beneficent, lived Edith, and never thought of any thing or person, but for its own sake. When she had attained midway the hill of life, she happened to be boarding in the house with a young farmer, who was lost in admiration of her lore. How he wished he, too, could read! "What, can't you read? O, let me teach you!"—"You never can; I was too thick-skulled to learn even at school. I am sure I never could now." But Edith was not to be daunted by any fancies of incapacity, and set to work with utmost zeal to teach this great grown man the primer. She succeeded, and won his heart thereby. He wished to requite the raising him from the night of ignorance, as Howard and Nicholas Poussin did the kind ones who raised them from the night of the tomb, by the gift of his hand. Edith consented, on condition that she might still keep school. So he had his sister come to "keep things straight." Edith and he go out in the morning,—he to his field, she to her school, and meet again at eventide, to talk, and plan and, I hope, to read also.
'The first use Edith made of her accession of property through her wedded estate, was to give away all she thought superfluous to a poor family she had long pitied, and to invite a poor sick woman to her "spare chamber." Notwithstanding a course like this, her husband has grown rich, and proves that the pattern of the widow's cruse was not lost in Jewry.
'Edith has become the Natalia of the village, as is Melissa its "Schöne Seele."'
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'Dec., 22, 1840.—"Community" seems dwindling to a point, and I fancy the best use of the plan, as projected thus far, will prove the good talks it has caused here, upon principles. I feel and find great want of wisdom in myself and the others. We are not ripe to reconstruct society yet. O Christopher Columbus! how art thou to be admired, when we see how other men go to work with their lesser enterprises! —— knows deepest what he wants, but not well how to get it. —— has a better perception of means, and less insight as to principles; but this movement has done him a world of good. All should say, however, that they consider this plan as a mere experiment, and are willing to fail. I tell them that they are not ready till they can say that. —— says he can bear to be treated unjustly by all concerned,—which is much. He is too sanguine, as it appears to me, but his aim is worthy, and, with his courage and clear intellect, his experiment will not, at least to him, be a failure.'
* * * * *
'Feb. 19, 1841.—Have I never yet seen so much as one of my spiritual family? The other night they sat round me, so many who have thought they loved, or who begin to love me. I felt myself kindling the same fire in all their souls. I looked on each, and no eye repelled me. Yet there was no warmth for me on all those altars. Their natures seemed deep, yet there was 'not one from which I could draw the living fountain. I could only cheat the hour with them, prize, admire, and pity. It was sad; yet who would have seen sadness in me? * *