The letter then plunges into the question of money and accounts, which were not Dr. Sewall’s strong point. “Poor little girl!—she has so many accounts, and I am dreadfully afraid she will get into a dreadful mess with them all! Do tell me if you got your accounts anything like straight after New York.” Dr. Sewall was overwhelmed with work, but her letters came as fast and frequently as mails could bring them. “I do hope you do not miss me as much as I miss you,” she wrote, and again: “I do hope this New Year that begins so sadly may not be a very hard one for you, though I fear you will have to fight hard before you can settle down at home. Do try to get some visiting at the Hospital or some medical work as soon as you can. It will do you good and your Mother too.” But she too, when it comes to a question of “business,” relapses delightfully into the child. “Do say you are contented with me, and that I have done well.” * * * * * For three weeks S.J.-B. drifted, uncertain of her course, and then she set her sail. “Today—after three weeks of doubt, indecision and rather negation—I was suddenly inspired to get up out of the dining-room arm-chair, walk to the Hospital, and ask Mr. Salzmann to read Medicine with me,—so Thursday and seq.—Histology! It’s quite odd how pleased I am at the prospect of ‘shop’!” On the last night of the year, as was her wont, she made her summing-up: “Within a few hours of eight years ago,—the window,—and ‘May the New Year cherish—’ I don’t think there are any ‘hopes that now are bright.’ I believe I have been growing downwards in some ways. The simply quiet and comfortable, with no bother of any kind, seems to be about my ideal now.” And this on the eve of the ‘Edinburgh Fight’! The truth is S. J.-B. was in one of those backwaters of life which may at any moment give place to the swift rush of the current. She was living a great deal, of course, in the life she had left behind. On January 4th she writes to Dr. Sewall: “When I find time I mean to write to your cousin.... I am sorry for W., he is a very nice boy. But, dear me, they do seem such a pair of children. I don’t think she will get a _nicer_ man, but of course that is nothing if she doesn’t love him. I quite agree with you, ‘Never marry if you can help it’!” And, in the depths of her mind she was constantly pondering the problems and mysteries of our being. “Jan. 21st. [Diary] 29!—‘et praeterea nihil’!” “Jan. 25th.... Yesterday Martineau’s fine definition of atheism,—the mind that venerates nothing, aspires to nothing.” “Jan. 31st. Came tonight across old Trench’s line,—‘When God afflicts thee think He hews a rugged stone, which must be shaped or else aside as useless thrown.’