The best of these secondary institutions existed in Boston, and it was thither that I was going with the hopefulness which befits the missionary spirit. [As has been elsewhere stated, most of the preceding chapters were written by Dr. Zakrzewska in a letter to her friend, Miss Mary L. Booth, in New York. And she closes this letter with the paragraphs which follow.] ... I could not refrain from writing fully of this part of my life which has been the object of all my undertakings, and for which I have borne trials and overcome difficulties which would have crushed nine out of ten in my position. I do not expect that this will be the end of my usefulness; but I do expect that I shall not have to write to you any more of my doings. It was simply in order that you, my friend, should understand me fully, and because you have so often expressed a wish to know my life before we met, that I finished this letter. Now you have me externally and internally, past and present. And, although there have been many influences besides which have made their impressions on my peculiar development, yet they are not of a nature to be spoken of as facts, as, for instance, your friendship for me. On looking back upon my past life, I may say that I am like a fine ship that, launched upon high seas, is tossed about by the winds and waves and steered against contrary currents until finally stranded upon the shore. There, from the materials a small boat is built, just strong enough to reach the port into which the ship had expected to enter with proudly swelling sails. But this ambition is entirely gone and I care now very little whether or not people recognize what is in me, so long as the object for which I have lived becomes a reality. And now, my good friend, I must add one wish before I send these last few pages to you, namely, that I may be enabled some day to go with you to Berlin to show you the scenes in which my childhood and youth were passed, and to teach you on the spot the difference between Europe and America. All other inducements to return have vanished. Nearly all the men who aided in promoting my wishes have passed away, and the only stimulus that now remains to make me want to revisit the home of my youth, is the wish to wander about there with you and perhaps with two or three other of my American friends. Until this can be accomplished, I hope to continue my present work in the New England Female Medical College which, though by no means yet what we wish it to be, is deserving of every effort to raise it to the position that it ought to take among the medical institutions of America. CHAPTER XXIII