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and the three degrees, should it be given to me to do so. I have read and re-read Spinoza's Ethics within the last thirteen months. His method in the arrangement of thought and motive has been of great use to me, but I think that I have been able to give them an extended application and some practical illustrations which did not lie within his scope.”
The next day she writes: “Dreamed of dearest Sammy.
Thought that he was in the bed, and that I was trying to nurse him in the dark as I have so often done.
I thought that when his little lips had found my breast, something said in my ear, ‘My life's life -the glory of the world.’
Quoting from my lines on Mary Booth.
This woke me with a sudden impression, Thus Nature remembers.”
She decided this spring to read some of her essays in Washington.
There were various difficulties in the way, and she was uncertain of the outcome of the enterprise.
She writes:--
“I leave Bordentown [the home of her sister Annie] with a resolute, not a sanguine heart.
I have no one to stand for me there, Sumner against me, Channing almost unknown to me, everyone else indifferent.
I go in obedience to a deep and strong impulse which I do not understand nor explain, but whose bidding I cannot neglect.
The satisfaction of having at last obeyed this interior guide is all that keeps me up, for no one, so far as I know, altogether approves of my going.”
Spite of these doubts and fears, the enterprise was successful.
Perhaps people were glad to shut their ears for a moment to the sound of cannon and the
Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston and New York. 1916.
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