Yours ever,
ORVILLE DEWEY.
To the Same.
ST. DAVID'S, March 7, 1872.
DEAR FRIEND—OF ALL MANKIND,—I see you have let them make you President of the Bellevue Local Visiting Association. Was there nobody else that could take that charge? Was it not enough for you to have the Forty-ninth Street Hospital to look after? But M. says, "Let her; let her work." And she talks about "living while you live," and comes at me with such saws. Saws they may well be called, for they sever prudence from virtue, instead of making them a rounded whole. The fact is, nobody has any sense—I mean the perfect article—but me. For I say, what if "living while you live" comes to not living at all? Is that what you call working? And why not let other people work? Is Mrs. Lane to be made the queen bee of New York philanthropy, and to become such an enormous conglomeration of goodness [319] that she can't get out of her hospital hive to visit her friends, nor let them visit her, with any chance of seeing her? And is nobody worth caring for unless he has been knocked down in the street, and has got a broken leg or a fever?
I am quite serious, though you may not think so. I do not like your taking another hospital, or the visitation of it, in charge. It must devolve an immense deal of care and thinking upon somebody. There 's reason in all things, or ought to be. Your brains and eyes ought to be spared from overwork. We shall hear of you as blind or paralytic next.
Tell your mother that we have to "stand to our colors" for the climate of New England nowadays, else they would be all blown away. It 's awful weather in New York too, I hope. I don't go out much. Really, if this March were not-a march to spring, it would be a hard campaign. With love to all your house, I am, as affectionately and warmly as the weather will permit,
Yours,
ORVILLE DEWEY.
To Rev. Henry W. Bellows, D.D.