May 6th. “I don’t think I ever had a letter from you that I did not enjoy and enter into sympathy with, because I never will open them _till_ I can enjoy them. Sometimes one has come at dinner time with others when Mr. O. has been here, and he has said,—‘Why don’t you open the brown letter? I know it interests you.’ I answer, ‘Just because I can’t fully enjoy it’.” May 7th. “You have a glorious field of usefulness before you. No one can guess to what extent you may be permitted to be useful to the generations to come. Plod on; expect rough waves that seem ready to overwhelm your best energies, and almost quench life; but One sitteth above the water floods Who will always bear you through.” May 8th. “My heart’s desire is that you should know _the truth of God_, whether it be what I believe or not, and that I should know it too.” (Previously she had written,—“I was thinking today how surely God would guide you into all truth,—this text confirming the thought,— ‘If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God.’) I think my cup of blessing would be fuller than I could bear did _we two_ fully agree on that which must be all-absorbing and by far the most interesting of subjects. Though C. and I essentially agree, we cannot communicate with each other—our natures are so different. I don’t think I do her justice or fully understand her.” May 9th. “We do well to struggle against that weary powerless feeling, because, given way to, it might overcome all power of energy, but I quite believe it is sometimes part of appointed discipline, and it is no use to quarrel with ourselves for it. Still I do incline to believe in your present case it proceeds from exhaustion of the nervous system, occasioned by a shock struggled against with all your power. You will be better when Dora is back, and you get real interchange of thought and loving sympathy. God bless her for giving it to my darling. Try not to allow yourself to think on getting up,—‘How long will it be before I lie down to rest again?’ Remember you desire to give yourself to service, though not so active just now, for others. Remember as a help how many bless you for having sped them on their way. Your want just now is someone to be helped and braced for usefulness.” (“Never fail,” writes Mr. Jex-Blake, “to tell me of any case you know of like that of the suffering governess; it is blessed to receive in such cases, but doubly blessed to give.”)