“April 12th. Notwithstanding all the discomforts in the way of board, I have been gaining greatly by my stay here. I have had a better opportunity for dissecting, etc., than ever before, and besides have learnt a good deal at the daily medical lessons which take place at Dr. Blackwell’s every afternoon. If I am to be a doctor at all, I mean to be a thoroughly good one, and now that I have gone so far in medical study, I mean to go right through, unless some very unforeseen obstacle comes. And then the future may decide what use my knowledge may come to. I sometimes think that a woman doctor could find very useful work in teaching Anatomy and Physiology,—or at least something of them—to women and girls, who are apt to be so terribly ignorant of them. Lately I have been spending an hour or so of an evening (for rest) in hearing a nice ‘daughter of the house’ read French to me, she having very few chances of help, poor child.” On the eve of sailing for England, she sums up the situation in her diary with her usual relentless truthfulness: “April 11th.... Within three weeks of leaving for home,—what balance sheet? Nearly three years in America. In that time complete health regained,—probably better than ever before,—real strength and power of study. A profession opening calmly and clearly before me,—its sciences already ‘as trees walking,’ becoming clearer daily. The edge of pain all gone. But with it vivid faith and life in many directions—belief in all invisible and much reaching after the heroic. A sort of passive ‘quo fata vocant,’—a sort of ceasing to demand the very good or very true, perhaps,—a sort of coldbloodedness that is not peace,—a nil admirari that only ‘will do for it.’ My vocation given up or laid aside, and I quietly learning knowledge chiefly because it is power,—hardly yet shaping out any end; but what does come, selfish enough. Professor of Anatomy? Surgeon? Doctor-Teacher? Sometimes a sharp pain rushes across,—‘Ah, if Mother shouldn’t live to _see_ me succeed!’—She does seem woven in with the heartstrings,—my old darling who _cannot_ forget. All this health and new life—more than ever hoped for—comes mediately from L.E.S.” If this estimate of herself is just, one can only say that the lulling for the time of her higher emotional nature was probably a blessing in disguise. It helped her to make her foundation of knowledge sure. She had in her measure to learn—what every true scientist must learn—that “the natural is the rational and the divine,” that “there is no real break between the natural and the supernatural.” “A man that looks on glass, On it may stay his eye—” and if his eye be single his whole body may yet be full of light. In any case the closing words of S. J.-B.’s ‘balance sheet’ are significant enough,— “Comes—_mediately_—from L.E.S.”!