It has often been said that the College teachers were overworked. It would be truer, perhaps, to state that too many chose to overwork, and that it was easy to do so. Miss Beale, who taught, read, wrote so much, interviewed people, conducted any amount of College business, and yet found time to write upon Browning or the Fourth Dimension, was unable rightly to estimate how little a young woman of average intelligence can do. She had to learn it by actual experience of cases, and she tried to learn it. She was always anxious to readjust a burden, took infinite trouble to do so, but did not always realise the weakness of many a willing horse, or the want of common-sense, which will make people heap up tasks or work without plan. She never wanted to play herself, could not understand that any one should seriously wish to do so; she therefore regarded such a thing as the teachers’ tennis-ground as quite superfluous.[74] Nor could she understand why any should wish to live out of sight of the place of their work. Even in the summer holidays she frequently chose the Sanatorium for a residence. Her own house was gradually absorbed by the College buildings, until it became almost as shut from the outer world as the women’s apartments in an oriental establishment, with no proper air and light of its own, only such as was derived from the surrounding corridors of the beloved College. Miss Beale preferred it should be so. Yet this attitude was but the defect of the great qualities by which she was enabled to make a complete self-surrender, and to call upon others to do the same ‘for the work’s sake.’ The only teachers who really felt ill-used or misunderstood, and who perhaps had some genuine ground for their complaint, were those who were unwilling to take trouble over fresh methods and subjects, or who were unable to rise to the high standard put before them, innocently thinking that the profession of a school-mistress was just an interesting occupation, or a means of earning a livelihood. Yet the practical side had its place. It was to Miss Beale’s foresight and initiative that the Pension Fund was in the first instance due. Miss Beale’s letters to Miss Clara Arnold, with whom she had a close correspondence from the time Miss Arnold left the College to become a teacher until her death in March 1906, show at once her ideal, and her close individual care for her own child. Some of the most interesting are quoted here:—