“Dec. 29th Sunday. Tonight the bitterness seemed doubled in finding ‘my teachers removed out of my sight.’ I just feeling my way to truth,—saved by her from so much doubt and possible infidelity. Well, God will teach me, will He not, Himself,—so Mother said. I cannot (or feel as if I could not: _cannot_ is not a word for ‘Christ’s soldier and servant’, is it?) put it all away. I seem so physically weak and _rotten_, so unable to exert will and force myself to be quiet. But I have found something to do. I behave infamously to the dear old man. Well! I mean to throw my whole being into being a good child at home. I _won’t_ be rude and bad to him! Now record this vow for a week,—don’t be superstitious, Jack; say ‘God helping me’ and go on,—forget yourself. Just do this piece of work,— and wait. So be it. What was the ‘chief evil’ to which the suffering must be directed to be sufficient? ‘Selfishness,’ said I. Truly, Jack. And what is it but intolerable selfishness,—this brooding over a ‘bootless bene’,—this expecting sympathy and all sorts of kindness and excuse from my Mother and the rest, and talking about nerves and fiddle-de-dees,—instead of forgetting myself and seeing to my work and to other people. Well, God helping me, now for a new leaf—of strength and resolve instead of whining self-pity.” It was with this inspiration that she wrote to one of her pupils: “Dec. 31st. 1861. DEAR LUCY, ... My Modern History was all right, thank you,—I forgot you had it. By the bye, your handwriting seems to me to have ‘suffered an improvement’—I must congratulate you. I am very glad you think I have helped you, dear child,—my life has been a very pleasant one in London,—its memory will be pleasanter still if it has been too not quite useless to some of the people who have helped to make it so. I could not easily count the people who have helped me,—some directly,—some merely ‘by living.’ It is a glorious thing, is it not, to be a link in that chain of help which encircles the world,—to pass on to another what one has given us,— feeling how all our broken bits of help and gift are gathered up in the perfection of the Great Giver and ‘Father of Lights.’ I do heartily hope that you will go back to Queen’s just to take and hold your place in that chain. Only do quite resolutely take your part for the highest and noblest,—remember ‘the soldier and servant’, and remember how very far we are from helping when we acquiesce in any wrong doing,—in any low standard of right and wrong, even by silence.