Dear Minnie, think well before you decide to come, whether you will choose to do so now, while all is bustle, change, confusion, and contention, or after we are settled. We long very much to see you; and you would be of great use, and it would be a great comfort to have you with me to “baffle” everyone. Could you manage to stay till Tuesday, and go with me to Ruskin’s? We would stay afterwards and see his pictures; and I could leave you at the Waterloo Station as we passed, coming home? You will hear Mr. Maurice too. I never can find time to-night to tell you all or one half of that which has happened only to-day. How much less then, that which has happened during the last week! Already I have more to do this week, than I could possibly do, if it were not absolutely necessary that it should be done. Mr. Neale has found a house, which he thinks would suit us; it must, however, be taken on lease; of course we can be neither legally nor morally bound to remain there. Our work may call us in other directions. I go to look for a toy-room to-morrow. Do come, darling.
DIFFICULTIES OF THE WORK
Tell my own Mamma that we feel with her how terribly painful this scene would be to her; but we hope she will soon come to us. Ask her not to think me unkind or thoughtless for not writing oftener. I really cannot. I work almost without intermission, giving up Lincoln’s Inn[[23]] even, continually. Also when one has some great purpose to carry out, some great struggle to go through, or some things troubling one, one cannot write to any to whom it would seem strange—not to mention that which is going on within one. If she could see what we go through, at every crisis of such a change as this, how one is one day triumphant, another uncertain, a third uneasy; and if there is momentary rest, the reaction is so strong that one is bound down by it, she would not wonder. Give my dear love to her.
Harry Rogers has been here to-night, to tell me about gold, outlines, brushes, pens, burnishing, etc.
I trust soon to send Mamma my first balance sheet! Do come, come early, but be prepared, if you come, to work.
If I find that I have time on Saturday or Monday to go to Ruskin, without an appointment, we will perhaps run the risk of not seeing him, as we can probably see the pictures.
Give my dear love to Mamma; tell her I hope not to fail, and ask her to believe me to be for ever her fellow-worker and disciple.
March 29th, 1856.
To Miss Harris.
I have seen your cousin to-day, as perhaps you may have heard, and am very much pleased with him and all that he says. I am very, very sorry now that we did not keep to the subject, in which I suppose his principal interest lies, the employment of women. But somehow one so naturally speaks of that which one is doing; and so the conversation naturally turned to the employment and education of children; though I think you may have seen how conscious I have been lately of the intimate connection between the two subjects; principally because, unless you can develop the minds of your workers, they never can become intelligent, or qualify themselves to fill better situations.