I am up to my chin in linen and glass, and I am very fond of housekeeping. In this too-highly-educated, too-little-active age it, at least, is a practical application of our theories to something--and yet, in the middle of my lists, my green lists, brown lists, red lists, of all my instruments of the ornamental in culinary accomplishments which I cannot even divine the use of, I cannot help asking in my head, Can reasonable people want all this? Is all that china, linen, glass necessary to make man a Progressive animal? Is it even good Political Economy (query, for "good," read "atheistical" Pol. Econ.?) to invent wants in order to supply employment? Or ought not, in these times, all expenditure to be reproductive? "And a proper stupid answer you'll get," says the best Versailles service; "so go and do your accounts; there is one of us cracked." [28] _Suggestions for Thought_, vol. ii. p. 385. VII Florence was an affectionate and dutiful daughter. She obeyed and yielded for many years. She strove hard to think that her duty lay at home, and that the trivial round and common task would furnish all that she had any right, before God or man, to ask. But as the sense of a vocation elsewhere strengthened and deepened in her mind, she may well have thought that, as her elder sister was contented to stay at home, a life of activity outside might for the other daughter not be inconsistent with affection for her parents. She had, indeed, intellectual interests of her own. She read a great deal in English, French, German; in devotional works, in poetry, history, philosophy. And what she read she marked, and inwardly digested. A copy (unfortunately not complete) is preserved of the first edition of Browning's _Paracelsus_, which she annotated with remarks, paraphrases, and illustrative cases as she read. The first scene of the poem--"Paracelsus Aspires"--contains many a passage which aroused a sympathetic echo in her heart. The key-note is struck early. "Pursuing an aim not to be found in life," is her comment, "is its true misery." Then she kept commonplace-books, in which, under heads alphabetically arranged--such as Age of Reason, Bigotry, Creeds, Death, Education, and so forth--she copied out passages which struck her. She was accumulating stores of information and reflection. In some remarks upon Lacordaire in one of her note-books I find this passage copied out:-- I desire for a considerable time only to lead a life of obscurity and toil, for the purpose of allowing whatever I may have received of God to ripen, and turning it some day to the glory of His Name. Nowadays people are too much in a hurry both to produce and consume themselves. It is only in retirement, in silence, in meditation, that are formed the men who are called to exercise an influence on society.