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Here, as in Green Peace days, she worked quietly and steadily.
Children and grandchildren might fill the house, might have everything it contained: she asked only for her “precious time.”
When she could not have an hour she took half an hour, a quarter, ten minutes. No fragment of time was too small for her to save, to invest in study or in work; and as her mind concentrated instantly on the subject in hand, no such fragment was wasted.
The rule of mind over body was relentless: sick or well, she must finish her stint before the day closed.
This summer of 1879 was a happy one.
After the feverish months of travel and pleasure, her delight in the soft Newport climate was deeper than ever.
She always felt the change from the air of the mainland to that of the island, and never crossed the bridge from Tiverton to Bristol Ferry without an exclamation of pleasure.
She used to say that the soft, cool air of Newport smoothed out the tired, tangled nerves “like a silver comb” !
“July 29. To my Club, where, better than any ovation, an affectionate greeting awaited me.... Thucydides is very difficult.”
This was the Town and Country Club, for some years a great interest to her. In her “Reminiscences” she tells how in a summer of the late sixties or early seventies, when Bret Harte and Dr. J. G. Holland, Professors Lane and Goodwin of Harvard were spending the season at Newport: “A little band of us combined to improve the beautiful summer season by ”
Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston and New York. 1916.
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