to be done with a
ready and hopeful heart. That "lamp of zeal," about which Margery
speaks in "Six to Sixteen," was never extinguished in Julie, even
after youth and strength were no longer hers:--

Like most other conscientious girls, we had rules and regulations
of our own devising; private codes, generally kept in cipher for
our own personal self-discipline, and laws common to us both for
the employment of our time in joint duties--lessons, parish work,
and so forth.

I think we made rather too many rules, and that we re-made them too
often. I make fewer now, and easier ones, and let them much more
alone. I wonder if I really keep them better? But if not, may
GOD, I pray Him, send me back the restless zeal, the
hunger and thirst after righteousness, which He gives us in early
youth! It is so easy to become more thick-skinned in conscience,
more tolerant of evil, more hopeless of good, more careful of one's
own comfort and one's own property, more self-satisfied in leaving
high aims and great deeds to enthusiasts, and then to believe that
one is growing older and wiser. And yet those high examples, those
good works, those great triumphs over evil which single hands
effect sometimes, we are all grateful for, when they are done,
whatever we may have said of the doing. But we speak of saints and
enthusiasts for good, as if some special gifts were made to them in
middle age which are withheld from other men. Is it not rather that
some few souls keep alive the lamp of zeal and high desire which
GOD lights for most of us while life is young?

In spite, however, of my sister's contentment with her lot, and the
kindness and hospitality shown to her at this time by relations and
friends, her position was far from comfortable; and Madam Liberality's
hospitable soul was sorely tried by having no home to which she could
welcome her friends, whilst her fragile body battled against
constantly moving from one house to another when she was often unfit
to do anything except keep quiet and at rest. She was not able to
write much, and during 1880 only contributed two poems to _Aunt Judy's
Magazine_, "Grandmother's Spring," and "Touch Him if You Dare."

To the following volume (1881) she again was only able to give two
other poems, "Blue and Red; or the Discontented Lobster," and "The
Mill Stream"; but these are both much lo