BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 93 



pathies would be moved to hear of these heartbursts, the 

 scanty and bare existence, the nominal wages and rewards 

 of toil, the longing in some hearts for a wider life, the glimpse 

 that some few had that all was not well in the world, the wait- 

 ing of others for a helping hand and leadership where alone 

 they would be powerless to go, the refuge of others in thoughts 

 of a reunion through their faith with loved ones now afar, who 

 have succumbed, alas ! after years of anguish. The hope and 

 aspiration of these souls, starving for sympathy, are engraved 

 in words on stones and tablets of their dead, to those dead, 

 asleep under the guardianship of fir-covered slopes and distant 

 snows, whose step will no longer resound within the walls of the 

 green-spired church, around whose base their graves cluster. 



I carried away with me the sense of a great oppression, an 

 oppression the outcome and realization of what the causes 

 of this burden to my senses might mean. The horror of these 

 sharp social contrasts in life, whether brought to us by 

 painter or observation, is as great as other horrors in- 

 deed greater because the source of the misery besetting 

 our path. The errors of all systems fostering and harboring 

 such motives of light and joy cannot be dismissed with a 

 careless thought. 



If I have brought these impressions for you to weigh, it 

 is with the knowledge that human suffering is not peculiar 

 to Europe, nor to any quarter of the globe; also I know by 

 earnest effort a light will arise to dispel from humanity these 

 shadows. 



A passage from a letter written in October of the following 

 year deepens the impression of the serious and increasingly 

 religious trend of her mind. She says : 



"I have returned, if I may say 'return,' although I do not 

 imply a retrogression, if the word carries with it that idea, to 

 a state of mind I at one time approached; but, with the ac- 

 cumulated wealth of experience and knowledge, this state is 

 not comparable with the old. The present condition is one 

 divested of all externality or desire to give expression by ex- 

 ternal forms, where before Church rites and rules were the 



