CHAPTER I

EARLY DAYS IN PRACTICE

The dramatic days were over. The task that now lay before S. J.-B. was to pick up all that remained of herself after the conflict, and settle down to practice. It is a solemn moment in the history of any doctor when he or she deliberately takes in hand the issues of life and death: mistakes can no more be avoided in this than in any other walk of life, and yet the consequences here are so much more _apparently_ important.

And if it is a solemn moment for any man or woman, it was surely not less so for her who for years had been a city set on a hill. In the course of the long struggle youth had quite slipped away; her best energies were spent; her nervous system was overstrained beyond the possibility of complete recuperation. If George Eliot could say with some truth that she began _Romola_ as a young woman and ended it an old one, how much more might S. J.-B. have said this of her education in medicine. Perhaps the coward in her would gladly now have shunned the conflict altogether.

Small say was allowed to that coward at any time, and at this juncture few even of S. J.-B.’s friends realized that—as regarded output of energy—she had already done a life’s work. No one would have been surprised if she had died a few years before, in the stress of the fight; but the human memory is short, and, as she had survived, almost everyone now looked upon the toil of the last ten years as simply the introduction to the volume. She was now expected to show how great a success a woman doctor can be.

First came the anxious question where to settle, and, while she meditated on this, she was making good, at Brompton and wherever she could find an entry,[135] the deficiencies in her hospital education.

Footnote 135:

We hear of her visiting the Middlesex, Moorfields, the Royal Free, the Cancer, and the Children’s Hospitals.

Her original plan had been to settle in London, to foster the School she had founded, and at the same time to be within easy reach of her Mother,—the Mother for whom she would at any moment in her life have thrown up every hope and plan that guided her.

There is no doubt that this would have been in most respects the ideal arrangement. There is room for everyone in London. In those days it was absolutely essential for a woman doctor to settle in a town large enough to allow for the overwhelming proportion of patients who declined to take their lives in their hands, so to speak, by trusting one of their own sex. Even if the patient herself was willing to lean her whole weight on an untried plank, husbands and mothers stood in the way. Indeed there were girls who reckoned it the prime luxury involved in earning their own living that they became free to employ the doctor of their choice—a woman.

It is true that patients—and still more their male relatives—were readier to trust S. J.-B. than they would have been to trust most other women. Her inherent motherliness was not weakened by any aggressive femininity; but on the other hand it is not to be supposed that she was any less alarming than she had been as a student. No doctor ever inspired greater enthusiasm and devotion than she did, but it was on the whole the few to whom she appealed. Her vein of tenderness lay too deep for the casual eye to see; and many were afraid of the occasional high- handed imperious ways and the disregard of what people were likely to say.

“It was like being lifted on a comet’s tail,” writes a patient to whom she had been called in an emergency in March 1878, “when you came in, strong and swift, with your eagle wings, getting over distances in a third of the time other people take to do it.”

This is admirable, and describes what many felt, but although being lifted on a comet’s tail is exactly what many patients want, the treatment is not universally applicable.

London, then, would probably have supplied S. J.-B. with a larger practice than she could have worked; many friends, and particularly her brother, were keenly anxious that she should settle there; Mr. Norton always regretted her departure; but, now that the School had been taken out of her hands, it seemed inadvisable that she should remain as a looker-on. The difficulty was to find another place big and representative enough: she dreaded the great midland towns. After much consultation, she decided on the last place on earth she might have been expected to choose,—on Edinburgh.

It was partly the bracing climate, partly the beautiful drives, partly the many friends who had stood by her so gallantly, that led to this spirited decision, but on the whole it was a mistake. The smoke of the conflict was still hot, and some of those who had admired her most had admired her for qualities which were not what they sought in a physician.

Moreover, she was the last person on earth to play up to the expectations of the community in which she lived. The Edinburgh of those days was a more conventional place than Edinburgh is now, and doctors above all were expected to conform to a particular standard. There was a general impression that piety paid and that an interest in missions was a great help to success in practice.

“You never will succeed unless you conform to these usages,” said a friend: “You might have Edinburgh at your feet if you would go to church regularly and show yourself a religious woman,” said another.

It is needless to say that these were not the arguments to use with S. J.-B. Never, moreover, since the far-off school-days in which she had given a highly-valued shilling to “the Jews” had she taken any interest in missions. That vein in her was worked out, or transmuted into something else. The more she read of the old religions—and she did read— the more she found in them to admire and respect,—the more it seemed to her that they were the fitting medium for the training of the people to whom they had been given. It must be frankly admitted too that she continued to see such questions in the atmosphere of the particular Evangelical school in which she had been brought up; in recognizing the evolution of the individual—of herself as an individual—she failed to recognize the evolution of the medium; and her life was so full of active beneficent interests as to leave scant time for the consideration of questions that did not at first sight appeal to her,—that did not seem to be her job.

In the Edinburgh, too, of those days, the ordinary people who “counted” were the people who liked things done “just so.” It disturbed their sense of the fitting, for instance, that S. J.-B. should pay professional visits, driving herself in a pony phaeton. Altogether she was too big, too untrammeled for the post. What was wanted was the woman who is a credit to any cause she may adopt. There are plenty of them now-a-days.

Finally, S. J.-B. realized from the first that, with her limited physical resources, she could not combine a social with a professional life. Hospitality is a poor word to describe the manner in which her door stood open to the few she loved, to those whom she thought she could help, to all in whom she recognized any sort of spiritual kinship; but from ordinary social engagements she stood aloof. She refused invitations to dinner,[136] or made excuse to leave so early that she might better, perhaps, not have gone; she declined to be lionised in any way; and she was apt to snub those whom she suspected of wishing to know her from motives of curiosity.

Footnote 136:

For the same reason she went but seldom to the theatre, unless an actor whom she greatly admired visited Edinburgh. When Henry Irving was there she would go as often as three times a week, and usually take a little party of friends. Louis XI. was, in her opinion, his masterpiece. For Miss Terry she had, like all the rest of the world, a great admiration. Of Ristori she used to speak almost with bated breath.

We must not forget how different she could be from all this,—how radiant, how sympathetic, how full of humour and fun. “What a comfort it is,” writes a patient at this time, “to see your dear supporting face!” “You always come as Hercules did to Alcestis,” writes another. “Emily and I have often spoken of your ‘How are you?’ being like his, ‘I am here to help.’”

Nor am I working up to the avowal that she was a professional failure: she was not: in many ways she was a great success. But if Edinburgh—like Cousin Ellie of old—could have made “even a slight alteration” in her, she might almost indeed have had the town at her feet.

* * * * *

She took the house 4 Manor Place, and in June 1878 she put her plate on the door and began. Three months later she started a small dispensary. Her professional isolation was great: Dr. Pechey was at Leeds; the other medical women were in London or farther afield. A doctor in the early days is sorely handicapped if he cannot discuss difficult cases and questions with his contemporaries and seniors. S. J.-B. never had, except for a few days at a time, the daily chit-chat—what students call the “shop”—that is so helpful; but she was not allowed to suffer. Dr. Heron Watson, Dr. George Balfour, and Dr. Angus Macdonald supported her with a chivalrous loyalty of which it is difficult to write calmly even now. They encouraged her to appeal to them at any time: they put the whole wealth of their learning and experience at her disposal; and—what was not a matter of course in those days—there was not a single question in all the complicated domain of medicine which they would not discuss with her as frankly as if she had been a man. It must be borne in mind that in her own special subject, the diseases of women, her equipment was all that could be desired. It was not for nothing that she had worked for two years under Dr. Sewall at Boston. If adequate training had been available, she might have made a great gynæcological surgeon, for she had great calmness and presence of mind in an emergency, and her hands, though full of character, were small and deft. Dr. Sewall always regretted the waste of her potentiality in this respect.

The following extracts are from letters written during the first few months of practice:

To her Mother,

“MY DARLING,

I know you will be pleased to hear that I yesterday received fees which just completed my first £50,—earned in Edinburgh in less than three months,—and that in what they call the “empty” season. And what pleases me still better is that everyone of my patients has done well. Several have left my hands practically recovered, and those who are still there are all going on satisfactorily. And as among them were two cases to which I was called when the patient was described as ‘dying’ (and both got well) I think I may very well be content. I have had 23 patients (nearly 100 visits) at my private house, and about as many more at my Dispensary, which has only been open a fortnight; so I don’t think there is much doubt about the ‘demand’ nor about my prospects.”

To Dr. King Chambers,

“I feel I am learning a great deal from the large variety of practice here. You will see from the enclosed paper that I have the help and support of four[137] of the best medical men in Edinburgh, and they are all excessively kind in giving me advice and help as often as I want it. No one ever had better friends and I doubt if anyone ever liked a profession better than I like mine.

I find that each of my cases involves so much reading and thinking that I am almost anxious they should not multiply too fast.”

Footnote 137:

The three mentioned above, together with Dr. Peel Ritchie. In later years, of course, she would have added to the list,—notably the names of Dr. (Sir Thomas) Clouston and Mr. C. W. Cathcart.

To Dr. (now Sir Thomas) Barlow to whom she had commended a young colleague,

“March 24th. [1879.]

DEAR SIR,

I thank you very much for the kind response to my note which reached me this morning. I feel sure that you will find Miss K. grateful for your kindness and most anxious to benefit by it. I have had repeated cause myself in my own Dispensary work to be thankful for the various lessons I learned from you and Dr. Lee.

Thank you also for the kind interest you express in my personal success, which indeed is all that I could desire. I have about 25 or 30 patients at the Dispensary every day that it is opened, and I also have a much larger private practice than is usual at so early a date. I have not yet been established here in practice quite 9 months, and I find that I have already had about 400 visits to or from private patients, which I think you will allow shows the ‘demand’ is a real one.

As you refer to the ‘general question of lady doctors’ you must allow me to say that I am quite sure it would have your support, from at any rate one point of view, if you had the least idea of the amount of preventible suffering which women bear with rather than consult men in special cases....

Now I do not care for a moment to argue whether this feeling is right or wrong; ... if the feeling exists it should be distinctly recognized as an element in the question; and I am quite sure that you would be one of the very first to desire that every possible remedy should be brought to such needless suffering.

In the same way I never care to argue at all about the relative capabilities of men and women. I mean to try to do my own work up to the very best of my power, and that is all that really concerns me. I cannot imagine any work nobler or more perfectly fascinating, than that of medicine, and I am very thankful to be allowed ever so small a share in it.”

To Mrs. Henry Kingsley,

“I have full as much work at my Dispensary as I can manage, indeed I am pretty well used up on those days, but I always enjoy them.

I am just going to begin a course of lectures which I hope may be successful.

It is hard work altogether, but nothing to the old worries.”

Hard work indeed it was, especially when one bears in mind that she was urged at times to undertake confinements at a very considerable distance,—as far off as Yorkshire. Moreover, being a woman, she had of course the cares of housekeeping, and S. J.-B. always took her housekeeping very seriously.[138] She was herself a good cook and an excellent manager, and her staff were expected to carry out her methods and principles loyally. If they happened to be lazy and unprincipled, or even easy-going, their tenure of office was likely to be brief. Her comfortable home—in common with all the other gifts of the gods—meant nothing to her unless she could share it. How heartfelt was her hospitality may be gathered from the following letters:

“August 15th. [? 1878.]

DEAR MISS IRBY,

Welcome home again! I saw in yesterday’s paper that you had reached England, and was going to write when your letter came. I shall be delighted to see you again! I expect to be here all autumn and winter (with the exception of a few days) and shall be only too glad to have you whenever you like best to come. Only do manage to give me at least a week, and let me know which time suits you best as soon as possible, so that I may make my plans suit yours.

Several people are most anxious to meet you, so I will ask them to dinner, etc., when you fix a time; but I hope you won’t accept invitations much (you are sure to have dozens) as I do want you to get a little rest while with me, and I want to take you drives about Edinburgh,—the country is so lovely. I shall tell everybody you will be too tired to go out much.

Would you like a public meeting here? I daresay it would help, though most residents are away at this season.

Yours affectionately, S. JEX-BLAKE.”

Footnote 138:

The invaluable Alice had retired from service to join a sister in Wales. She and her mistress continued to correspond till the end.

“June 16th. [1879.]

DEAR MRS. THORNE,

I hear that your two girls are coming to Morton next week. Don’t you think it would be very wrong to let them travel so far all alone? Don’t you think it is clearly your duty to come and stay a week or two with me when you arrive? I should like so very much to see you again at something like leisure, and also to show you my Dispensary and all and sundry I am doing here. _So_ many Edinbro’ friends would like to see you! _Do_ try to come if only for a week or two!

I remember that the ‘wonderful woman’ went to London and back for 24 hours once, so she can’t mind travelling! In haste

Yours sincerely, S. JEX-BLAKE.”

“June 18th.

DEAR MRS. THORNE,

I shall be really _delighted_ if you will come down with your girls and spend a week or two with me while they are at Morton. You and I have never had any really quiet time together since our student days, and I cannot tell you how much I should enjoy some talks with you, and how glad I should be of your advice about lots of things in my Dispensary and otherwise. Dr. Sewall you know always said you were _the_ doctor among us, and I quite believe it. I wish so very often that I could ask you about things.”

To a colleague in London she writes a month or two later:

“Your thanking me so much for a very moderate amount of good nature shown to Miss X., makes me wonder how you _expect_ one to behave to people who are ill and poor. I am sure you yourself act upon the ‘aux plus déshérités le plus amour’ principle? Seriously I have done very little for her beyond what I should have done for anybody more or less in her position, except perhaps half a dozen drives and dinners which I promised ‘pour l’amour de vos beaux yeux' before I saw her.

I am afraid you must think me a very ungrateful person in my turn, for I don’t _say_ a quarter as much about your various kindnesses to me and my friends.”

She always had a word of brave and wise advice for colleagues who appealed to her:

“I am inclined to think you had better send Miss Z. off to Australia. I am sure Miss Du Pre will gladly do her part if you write to her about it. She is now at ‘Surbiton, S.W.,’—no farther address required.

I think you are _quite_ wrong to think you will ‘not forgive yourself’ if the plan does not succeed. I have long ago come to the conclusion that ‘efforts are ours, results are God’s,’—and, if you don’t like that phraseology, you can paraphrase it as you like, so long as you acquiesce in my conclusion that we are _not_ to blame or worry ourselves if things go wrong when we have done our best.

How I wish we could sit by that upstairs window and have a chat over it all!”

* * * * *

“No, life isn’t a bit of a failure, and you wouldn’t think so if we could get ten days’ holiday together up in the highlands!—don’t I wish we could!—for I am very tired too.

I’ve got to go off to Yorkshire in a few days to attend ——’s patient....

My coachman got drunk last week, and I turned him off at an hour’s notice, and had to see to the stable myself for a day or two!—My whole household has been upside down, and in the midst of it my dear old Turk died last week, but quite quietly and without pain. I have a new page, and a new cook, and a new groom,[139] and am going to have a new housemaid,—don’t you pity me?—Still I say ‘Life is good,’—Can you have better testimony?”

Footnote 139:

In place of the “coachman”; she never had both.

Her advice on occasion could be fairly drastic:

“Yes,—I know about Miss W. _Why_ do you _let_ her stay 1½ hours with you? At the end of five minutes I should take out my watch and say,— ‘Now I have just ten minutes more for you,—is there anything you want to say?’ That’s the way to treat those sort of folks. _I_ am not ‘too good for this world.’”

Here is a rather amusing answer to a question from Dr. Pechey,—“Why do you recommend Vermouth?”

“DEAR EDIE,

I sent off my two cards to you too hurriedly to answer about ‘Vermouth’!—but now let me say at my leisure that I never heard anything more beautifully illustrative of the way stories are ‘evolved.’

The one and only occasion when I made acquaintance with Vermouth was when one day, during a hurried call at Mrs. Nichol’s, the dear old lady in Mr. F.’s presence, offered me some Vermouth as something new she had got, and insisted on my tasting it,—which I did, and said I thought it ‘very nice,’ as in duty bound! Neither before nor afterwards have I either seen or heard of it! It really _is_ nice, I think,—in the orange bitters line,—but further I know nothing about it, and certainly never recommended it in my life—nor expect to.

My professional life is, I find, largely a crusade against tea and alcohol, so certainly I am not likely to preach up new liqueurs—if this is one.”

To Dr. Sewall she writes,

“Oct. 8th. [1879.] ... I have a very charming little brougham, which my Mother gave me; and a beautiful horse, quiet as a lamb and strong as a bull, from Miss Du Pre. Altogether it is an extremely smart turn- out, and I should like so much to show it to you! I hope I shall this summer. You _must_ come then if possible,—it is so hard to be apart so many years!

I am so sorry my Father’s carriage is worn out. That little gift was such a pleasure to him and almost the last thing he did. I think the letter in which he told me he had paid the money to my bankers was the very last I had from him—dear old man!...

Dr. King Chambers gave the inaugural address at our School this year, I moved the vote of thanks to him,[140] as it was my one day in London. I will try to send you a report.”

Footnote 140:

This was probably _not_ the occasion of which she writes in her diary,—“S. J.-B. made very nice speech in moving vote of thanks,—only forgot to thank much!”

Later she writes,

“I have rather a sore heart today, for dear old Turk has just died in my arms.... He seemed about as usual today, but rose from where he was by the kitchen fire, walked into the scullery and fell over. They fetched me, and he gave just two gasps in my arms and died. It seems a bit of one’s life gone, when he had been in it for 13 years!—and a Boston bit too.”

“Nov. 29th. 1879.... We are in great excitement here with the visit of Gladstone to Edinburgh,[141] and his speeches. I send you two papers today, to show you how he alludes in one speech to the sympathy of women with his cause,—I have written a short letter in today’s _Scotsman_ asking if it would not be better that they should be able legitimately to express that sympathy through the Suffrage.... How I hope and trust to see you here next year!”

Footnote 141:

This was the celebrated visit to contest the County of Midlothian,—a “triumphal procession”!

Apparently Miss Pechey did not think Gladstone’s appreciation of women sufficiently adequate to be worth acknowledging, for a few days later S. J.-B. writes to her,

“I like Gladstone much better than you do, or I shouldn’t have written as in the _Scotsman_, but no doubt he is wrong about women,—his wife’s fault however, I fancy. Miss Irby went to stay with them for a day or two last year, and I know he admires her hugely,—perhaps she may be a means of grace to him.”

It was about this time that the opinions of a number of representative women were collected on the subject of the Suffrage. S. J.-B. at first declined to respond, but, on Miss Irby’s remonstrance she wrote the following lines, which are quoted here because they represent fairly the calm and decided attitude she took upon the subject throughout life:

“If I correctly understand the British Constitution, one of its fundamental principles is that Taxation and Representation should go together, and that every person taxed should have a voice in the election of those by whom taxes are imposed. If this is a wrong principle, it should be exchanged as soon as possible for some other, so that we may know what is the real basis of representation in this country; if it is a right principle, it must admit of general application, and I am unable to see that the sex of the tax-paying householder should enter into the question at all.

The argument respecting the ‘virtual representation’ of women under the present system seems to me especially worthless, as it can be answered alternatively thus:—If women as a sex have exactly the same interests as men, their votes can do no harm, and indeed will not affect the ultimate result; if they have interests more or less divergent from men, it is obviously essential that such interests should be directly represented in the councils of the nation. My own belief is that in the highest sense, the interests of the two sexes are identical, and that the noblest and most enlightened men and women will always feel them to be so; and, in that case, a country must surely be most politically healthy where all phases of thought and experience find legitimate expression in the selection of its parliamentary representatives.”

As regards the medical education of women S. J.-B. never for one moment lost interest in the movement as a whole. If her hand was no longer on the helm, she never deserted her post on the bridge. A new Medical Bill was on the _tapis_ at this time,—a Bill which—very rightly—made it essential that all doctors should hold a qualification in both medicine and surgery. As, however, no College of Surgeons would examine women (who nevertheless had gone through the required surgical _training_), this Bill would have had the result of placing women on a different and inferior footing to men as doctors, and the hard-won steps that had seemed to be cut in the solid rock would have melted away once more.

The General Medical Council, in its suggested amendments to the Bill, proposed to establish a special Board for the examination of women, and to admit them in the end to a separate register! It was the old “strawberry jam labels” over again. Moreover in order to conform with the requirements of this Board a woman must be in a position to assert that she had received _no part of her education_ along with men,—a requirement that at once ruled out all the women who were enjoying the great privilege of studying at the University of Paris.

So there was small encouragement even now to relax that keen look-out on the bridge.

In Dr. Heron Watson, who was at that time President of the Edinburgh Royal College of Surgeons, S. J.-B. had a keen and sympathetic adviser, and with his approval she wrote to her former supporters, Mr. Stansfeld, Lord Aberdare, Lord Ripon and others, begging them to keep a watchful eye on the interests of the women. Early in the spring of 1878 she had urged Mrs. Anderson to write to two or three of the London daily newspapers on the subject, while she herself undertook two or three more; and on April 19th she writes again:

“DEAR MRS. ANDERSON,—It occurs to me that it would be well for the 8 registered women to send up a distinct protest against the new Medical Bill to strengthen the hands of our friends in both Houses.

I have made a rough draft of what I should propose, and enclose a copy to you, while also forwarding one to Mr. Stansfeld. Before doing anything further I shall wait to hear what you and he think about it, and whether you have any alterations to propose.

If the plan is adopted, can you tell me how we can get Dr. Blackwell’s signature? There is no great hurry, as the petition need not be presented for three or four weeks.

Yours truly, S. JEX-BLAKE.”

To Mrs. Thorne she writes some months later,

“I had a long talk with Dr. Watson yesterday, and he tells me the Government is likely to drop the Medical Bill for this session. I shall be rather sorry if they do.

If they do _not_, I hope you will make a point of ‘keeping the run’ of every proposed amendment, and of watching very carefully how each may affect women. I should look out very sharp if I were in London, but here it is impossible to do so with sufficient efficiency and promptitude; so please don’t let anything slip. The matter is almost more important than School affairs, and even friendly M.P.’s are too busy to be trusted and often they don’t see the bearing of phrases. Mr. Stansfeld, Mr. Cowper Temple or Dr. Cameron, could any of them get papers for you, but they need reminding.”

Amid these manifold interests life ran its course in the early years of practice. The happiest times were those when Miss Du Pre came to stay with her friend, and it was the dream of S. J.-B.’s life that these visits might develop into constant companionship. No one who was not a doctor ever took a more sympathetic interest in medical questions than did Miss Du Pre: her advice in difficult social and professional problems was invaluable; and then there was her delightful sense of fun! “The only witty friend I ever had,” S. J.-B. says about this time. And, added to all was her sheer goodness and interest in the poor.

“32 at Dispensary,” writes S. J.-B. in her diary. “One or two so hungry and forlorn that they went to my heart. Oh, dear, if only J. [Miss Du Pre] were here to do her half of the work!

No motto of mine that over the Venice monastery, ‘O solitudo, sola beatitudo!’”

It is needless to say that Miss Du Pre’s visits were as long and as frequent as the many other claims in her life made possible, and in her absence she entered as of old into every detail of her friend’s life.

Of course this friendship could not but take in great measure the place of the old enthusiasm for Octavia Hill, though the latter never died.

In May 1877 someone had told S. J.-B. of the “terrible trouble” Miss Hill was in. “Oh, dear,” she cried in her diary, “I’m ashamed of the first sort of thrill of triumph that she should know how it hurts!”[142]

Footnote 142:

It was not till later—not perhaps till she saw that regrettable number of _Fors Clavigera_ that S. J.-B. had any clear idea what the trouble was.

“My life is full and complete again,” she writes in April 1878, “if somewhat greyer for all the past pain; and, if I can have J., the former things may abide in shadow till the day of restitution of all things. I can’t but believe that _some_ day, some _where_, I shall learn what it all meant,—even now one sees in some measure ‘why it could not be otherwise.’

It is at any rate a grand thing that, over and through all, each has kept on at her work and done yeoman service.”

“Dear L. E. S. turned the tide, gave me back the beginning of strength and life, physical and mental, and since then for the last 12 years I have stumbled steadily onwards,—gaining in strength and calm and hope,—till at length I can feel a wholesome life of my own—quite independent of the old pain,—with a very dear hand in mine, and with a grand life of work and struggle against disease before me.”

On the last night of that year she writes:

“‘Tarry thou the Lord’s leisure,’ ... ‘and He shall strengthen thy heart.’...

I believe profoundly in the ‘that He might be able to succour’. One does learn through pain what one never learns without,—and, hard as it is to _feel_ it, I suppose one knows the ‘power of ministration’—the ‘Lo, I come’ _is_ higher and more than even the personal happiness.

So—take and use Thy work.

What is the use of _talking_ about presenting ourselves a ‘living sacrifice,’—and then moaning over pain,—wanting to ‘freeze on a warm night’!

Oh, dear!—one’s own littleness.

Well, God teach and guide us all.”

A few weeks later she comes to the end of the volume, and writes in a sunnier vein:

“Yet surely,—‘hitherto He has helped us’—Look at beginning of this book,—or stronger still look back some 17 years and see how the light has arisen out of darkness,—and shall it not grow and grow.

I fully believe ‘God is very merciful to those who suffer _young’_. How much harder the other way.

And much to be thankful for in health. No neuralgia,—very great return of brain power....

Who can look forward?—who dare plan?

Domine dirige nos!”