“It is of no use to try to please people! I do not mean to try. I will do what seems to me right, and then learn to be content to be abused, if _I can!_ What with every one’s ‘claims,’ and with people’s ‘rights’ to a seat, always the best!—friends, family, parents, old pupils, etc., it is all the same! Every one is dissatisfied, do what one will; some one else is preferred, some one is neglected.... And so the stings go on, till I nearly break down under the wounds they inflict. When barely able to get about again through the work, I hear of my neglect, etc., of one to whom, in my heart of hearts, it never occurred to me as possible that any one could accuse me of ingratitude. “Pray forgive me, dear Annie, but you can never know the bitter price one pays for success. I think it as heavy as that of failure! This has stirred up a depth of scorn and anger of which I feel ashamed, though I feel almost ashamed, too, of the race of beings to which I belong. “I do not know whether it will do any good to have it out, so to speak, with you. I fear perhaps it will worry you. But as I have written it, it shall go, and I hope you and I shall meet next Saturday, when the keenness of the stroke has passed. I do not, however, think that just now I can write to our friends. I should not wish to pain them, so silence will be my best refuge. Do not please say anything. I will fight my fight out with myself alone. “God’s law of compensation comes in; He will neither suffer one to be unduly elated nor depressed. “It is part of our discipline in life that we should constantly fail, and I earnestly hope that I may be permitted to try and try again. “But the old days have gone, and it would be better as well as easier for me for no visitors to be allowed to enter except the few on the platform and the mothers of girls taking prizes _high in the school_. “Trying to please every one, and to recognize his or her rights, is not of the least use. Like the miller in the fable, one only succeeds in pleasing no one. “There is so much to be grateful and thankful for that I am really ashamed of myself for feeling vexed. I have not told you half the vexations to which people subject me, certainly not because I ignore them, but because by trying to please it seems impossible to succeed.” Earlier in this “year of triumph” there is a pathetic little note to her sister, showing how much stronger was the “domestic” than the public woman in her— “February 18, 1879. “DEAREST LITTLE MOTHER, “Don’t be unhappy, but you did not think how much I miss your loving little hug and petting. “No one pets me but you, and occasionally Mrs. Bryant. Darling boy allows me graciously to pet him, but he does not make advances to me.