Yesterday your letter (containing the one from the Times agent) was brought to me in the dissecting-room, and wasn’t I pleased to get it!... It is quaint sometimes to think of the different scenes in which letters are written and read! I am really very much grieved to hear of Daddy’s having been so ill,—I did not understand fully before how serious his attack had been. I comfort myself, however, with hoping that while the news is coming here, he is really getting better daily. Give him much love from me and a big kiss on each cheek.... I hope my old lady takes care of herself. _Do_ for my sake. Darling, I ought sooner to have answered your enquiries about the Colleges, etc. Harvard (Boston) is a University for _men_, and we couldn’t get in there, because they wouldn’t have any women. I was anxious to go there because the degree is considered a valuable one. Here in New York the College I am at is just opened by Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell for women only,—or at least only women attend it, though I believe men would be admitted. The teachers are 9 in number,—7 men and 2 women professors, as you will see by the circular. In the actual classes we are all women students; in going to hospitals, dispensaries, etc., we mix with the men. The teaching is really very good and I am getting on capitally. Capitally in every way indeed.... I see it is now a little past nine, and I shall soon be off to bed and sleep like a top till about 6 a.m. I have never worked so hard in my life (for a continuance), and I have never been in such good health. I am absolutely _well_, (and what a blessing that is after all these years!) I eat and walk and sleep perfectly, have no pains and aches, and the sweetest of tempers! I only wish Mother could peep in and see me in my little den!—dog and Alice and all. With very much love, darling, to Daddy and Carry, Yours lovingly, SOPH.” “Saturday. Nov. 14th. [Diary.] In sober fact I get on grandly. Better and stronger than I have ever been.” “Monday, Nov. 16th. Oh, why, _why_ didn’t they telegraph at any rate? If people only _would_ do _as_ they are asked! Carry’s note just come after Chemistry. ‘I believe if you could start from New York today, you would have no prospect whatever of seeing him alive’.” “Sunday, Nov. 29th. Brighton. Reached home about 10.30 a.m. yesterday (after a rush through Dublin, Cork, etc.) to find that he had died ten days even before that letter arrived. Nov. 6th. 9.50 a.m.” It seems a pity for her own sake that S. J.-B. could not have been with her Father during those last days of his life, for his was certainly one of the cases in which “The soul’s dark cottage, battered and decayed, Lets in new light through chinks that Time has made.”