... I enjoyed being with my friends. I told you that they were Universalists, but theirs is a better-toned piety than that of some Orthodox friends. Still, there was a want in it, a something that left me longing; it was as if they were looking at the sunlit side of a mountain, and never thought of the shadows which must be beyond. The mystery of life is in its shadows, and its beauty, in great part, too. There isn’t shadow enough in Universalism to make a comprehensible belief for me. And yet I believe there is no corner of God’s universe where His love is not brooding, and seeking to penetrate the darkest abyss.... The question about her marriage was definitely settled while she was at Norton. She decided, in the first place, on general grounds, that it would be best for her not to marry. There were various reasons for this. She had many premonitions of the breaking down of her health, which finally came in 1862, when she had to give up teaching; and owing to some exaggeration of her symptoms--for at times she felt that her mind might give way--she thought it unwise for her to take up the responsibilities of matrimony. In addition to this, she grew fond of her independence, and as her ability asserted itself, she seemed to see before her a career as an authoress, which she felt it her duty to pursue. Special reasons, of course, one cannot go into fully, though there are some features of them that may be mentioned; to Esther she stated an abundantly sufficient one,--“I am almost sure there are chambers in my heart that he could not unlock.” She also differed radically from her lover on the subject of slavery. Her feelings as an abolitionist were so strong that she knew where there was such a division of sentiments a household could not be at peace within itself. This difference of opinion concerning all the questions that culminated in the Civil War resulted in a final refusal, which afterwards found public expression in her noted poem, “A Loyal Woman’s No,” an energetic refusal of a loyal woman to a lover who upheld slavery:-- “Not yours,--because you are not man enough To grasp your country’s measure of a man, If such as you, when Freedom’s ways are rough, Cannot walk in them,--learn that women can!”