August 1st, 1858.
To Miranda and Emily.
Take dearest Mama under your special care, for she will not take care of herself under her own. Send her back stronger, I charge you. Also think of your old sister here, and how she loves you both, and thinks of you. You won’t think her unkind not to come, knowing what prevents her, and she hopes her previous consent proves to you that work and whims wouldn’t have detained her. Be merry, be happy, be free; send for anything conveyable that you want, and trust to Aladdin’s lamp. See what grand things it has done already, and have faith.
August 8th, 1858.
To Gertrude.
If we were all less self-occupied, what a depth of beauty and order we should see in the influence of persons and things on people, traced in the momentary lighting up of an eye, or the slight quiver of a lip, which we lose perhaps in a fit of self-contemplation; and that revelation of God’s purpose and way of work passes unnoticed, a cause of praise and power lost to us. And then I would wish most lovingly to grasp the whole purpose of each life, and influence of details on it, to see all the strong impulses leading to selfishness or pride, or any form of evil; to watch, not unaiding, the struggle with them; to contemplate with intense sympathy and reverence every purifying affection, stimulating hope, earnest purpose, self-control, and every form of good; to look at all, not as one standing aloof or above; but as fellow-worker, fellow-sufferer; to trace the same tendency to evil and good in myself; to find the point or points, as one always does, in which everyone is so much greater than oneself, that one bows before it in joy and cries, “Thank God for it.”
4, Russell Place,
August 15th, 1858.
To Mrs. Hill.
R.[[32]] went on Wednesday. Her mother was much nicer at the last. I hear from Brighton that the child is very happy. It would have done you good to see her delight at her new clothes, and the care with which she went to a clean crossing, tho’ the roads were not very muddy. Her indifference about leaving home was, of course, very sad. But just as we were going away, one of those immense Irish women one sometimes sees, who was selling apples in the Old Bailey, called her back, and giving her a kiss said, “God bless you, child. Be a good girl.”