“Your pleasant and affectionate letter reached me some days ago. The kind feeling you express warms one’s heart, at this distance from home, when one feels very acutely too often that one has drifted away from all who know, or care, or are cared for. One’s life feels so useless, and the current of life seems so strong in England that those who can no longer go on with it have a sense of isolation which kind words like yours break in upon most soothingly. “I wanted to tell you that you have nearly, if not quite, converted me to the needlework in schools to which I have always been opposed on our council—not from any want of realizing the importance of the art, but because it is one that ought to be taught at home. I was a great worker till a few years ago. In all our young days we made everything we wore, and I was so fond of embroidery that I scarcely trusted myself to look at it in the morning, lest I should be tempted to waste my time upon it. I tell you this that you may see how little likely I am to undervalue the art; and if mothers are so foolish or so ignorant as not to teach it, then, sooner than leave it untaught, I acknowledge that we ought to take it up. “But with our scanty time and overcrowded subjects, the difficulty is very great. This reminds me of what I thought a good thing in the St. Martin’s Lane School—and I believe it was your friend Miss Doreck who established it—and that was a prize for the best piece of needlework _done in the holidays_. That stirs mothers as well as daughters.” Those who were inside the University Movement had many a quiet laugh over the baseless terrors of the outsiders who prophesied the dire results to arise from the possession of degrees by women. I remember the appreciation with which Miss Buss repeated a story she had just heard from one of her girls, who had gone to a dance shortly after gaining her B.A. degree, whilst the subject was still matter for talk. Her partner, feeling himself quite safe with this peculiarly fair, sweet, girlish-looking girl, in her pretty evening frock, had made himself merry over the lady-graduates, winding up with the remark, “There is always something quite unmistakable about them, don’t you know! You can’t fail to spot them at a glance!” His very amiable partner only replied gently, “Do you think so?” But one of her friends proved less merciful, and the poor young man found himself in a position to sympathize with another victim, also at an evening party, who had been for some time talking, without knowing it, to the fair winner of a prize essay on some abstruse point of law. When at last he discovered her name, the shock was so great that, without waiting to collect himself, he blurted out, “What! _You Miss Orme?_ Why, I thought you hadn’t an idea in your head!”—a remark naturally treasured by that lady as one of her most cherished compliments.