gradually grow toward everybody, how interested in their interests,
how happy in their happiness. And if you want work for Christ (and the
more you love Him the more you will _long_ for it), that work will come
to you in all sorts of ways. I do not believe much in duty-work; I think
that work that tells is the spontaneous expression of the love within.
Perhaps you have not been sick enough yourself to be skilful in a
sick-room; perhaps your time for that sort of work hasn't come. I meant
to get you a little book called "The Life of Faith"; in fact, I went
down town on purpose to get it, and passed the Episcopal Sunday-school
Union inadvertently. I think that little book teaches how _every_thing
we do may be done for Christ, and I know by what little experience I
have had of it, that it is a blessed, thrice blessed way to live. A
great deal is meant by the "cup of cold water," and few of us women have
great deeds to perform, and we must unite ourselves to Him by little
ones. The life of constant self-discipline God requires is a happy one;
you and I, and others like us, find a wild, absorbing joy in loving and
being loved; but sweet, abiding peace is the fruit of steady check on
affections that _must_ be tamed and kept under. Is this consistent
with what I have just said about growing more loving as we grow more
Christlike? Yes, it is; for _that_ love is absolutely unselfish, it
gives much and asks nothing, and there is nothing restless about it....
I have been very hard at work ever since I came here, with my darling M.
as my constant, joyous comrade. We have been busy with our flower-beds,
sowing and transplanting, and half the china closet has tumbled out of
doors to serve as protection from the sun. Mr. Prentiss says we do
the work of three days in one, which is true, for we certainly have
performed great feats. The night we got here we found the house lighted
up, and the dining-table covered with good things. People seem glad to
see us back. I don't know which of my Dorset titles would strike you
as most appropriate; one man calls me a "branch," another "a child
of nature," and another "Mr. Prentiss' woman," with the consoling
reflection that I sha'n't rust out.

_To Mrs. Smith, Dorset, August 6, 1871._

I don't know when I have written so few letters as I have this summer.
My right hand has forgot its cunning under the paralysis, under which my
heart has suffered, and which is now beginning to affect my health qui