Laura E. Richards, Maud Howe, Florence Howe Hall, Julia Ward Howe, 1819-1910, in two volumes, with portraits and other illustrations: volume 1

“ [276] thinks he can stop it with medicine. When he told me that it was in all probability a cancer, I felt at first much unsettled in mind. I feared that the thought of it would occupy my mind and injure my health by inducing sleeplessness and nervous excitement. Indeed, I had some sad and rather vacant hours, but dinner and Julia's ¹ company put my dark thought to flight and I lay down to sleep as tranquilly as usual.”

[whatever this trouble was, it evidently brought much suffering, but finally disappeared. We learn of it for the first time in this record; she never spoke of it to any of her family.]

“Oak Glen. June 21. here I am seated once more at my old table, beginning another villeggiatura, which May easily be my last. Have read a little Greek and a long article in the ‘New world.’ I pray the dear heavenly father to help me pass a profitable season here, improving it as if it were my last, whether it turns out to be so or not.”

[she was not in her usual spirits this summer. She felt the heat and the burden of years. The Journal is mostly in a minor key.]

“July 16. took up a poem at which I have been working for some days, on the victims in Pekin; a strange theme, but one on which I feel I have a word to say. Wrote it all over....”

“July 19. was much worn out with the heat. In afternoon my head gave out and would not serve me for anything but to sit still and observe the flight of birds and the freaks of yellow butterflies. ...”