ng friends.

_Lady Russell to Mrs. Drummond_

PEMBROKE LODGE, _December_ 16, 1893

Your long interesting letter is most welcome. You are very good and
brave to do so much for the good of others, while suffering
yourself. How much harder it is to _bear_ patiently, and keep
up sympathy and fellow-feeling within us in spite of illness, than
to do any amount of active work while in health. I always find my
highest examples in those who know how to "suffer and be strong,"
because it is my own greatest difficulty.

Oh, my dear child, what opinions _can_ poor I give on the
almost insoluble problems you put before me? I wish I knew of any
book or any man or woman who could tell me whether a Poor Law, even
the very best, is on the whole a blessing or a curse, and how the
"unemployed" can be chosen out for work of any useful or productive
kind without injury to others equally deserving, and what are the
just limits of State interference with personal liberty. The House
of Lords puzzles me less. I would simply declare it, by Act of the
House of Commons, injurious to the best interests of the nation and
for ever dissolved. Then it may either show its attachment to the
Constitution by giving its assent to its own annihilation, or
oblige us to break through the worn-out Constitution and declare
their assent unnecessary. It is beyond all bearing that one great
measure after another should be delayed, or mutilated, year after
year, by such a body, and I chafe and fret inwardly to a painful
degree. Oh for a long talk with you! I will not despair of going to
you, "gin I be spared" till the days are reasonably long.

_Lady Russell to Lady Agatha Russell_

PEMBROKE LODGE, _October_ 10, 1894

... Alas! for our dear Oliver Wendell Holmes! He has left the world
much the poorer by his death, but much the richer by his life and
works.... Lord Grey gone too, and with him what recollections of my
young days, before and after marriage, when he and Lady Grey and we
were very much together. We loved them both. He was a very trying
political colleague to your father and others, but a very faithful
friend. The longer I live the more firmly I am convinced that in
most cases to know people well is to like them--to forget their
faults in their merits. But no doubt it is delightful to have no
f