Darling, I ought sooner to have answered your enquiries about the Colleges, etc. Harvard (Boston) is a University for _men_, and we couldn’t get in there, because they wouldn’t have any women. I was anxious to go there because the degree is considered a valuable one. Here in New York the College I am at is just opened by Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell for women only,—or at least only women attend it, though I believe men would be admitted.
The teachers are 9 in number,—7 men and 2 women professors, as you will see by the circular. In the actual classes we are all women students; in going to hospitals, dispensaries, etc., we mix with the men. The teaching is really very good and I am getting on capitally.
I see it is now a little past nine, and I shall soon be off to bed and sleep like a top till about 6 a.m.
I have never worked so hard in my life (for a continuance), and I have never been in such good health. I am absolutely _well_, (and what a blessing that is after all these years!) I eat and walk and sleep perfectly, have no pains and aches, and the sweetest of tempers!
I only wish Mother could peep in and see me in my little den!—dog and Alice and all.
With very much love, darling, to Daddy and Carry,
“Saturday. Nov. 14th. [Diary.] In sober fact I get on grandly. Better and stronger than I have ever been.”
“Monday, Nov. 16th. Oh, why, _why_ didn’t they telegraph at any rate? If people only _would_ do _as_ they are asked! Carry’s note just come after Chemistry. ‘I believe if you could start from New York today, you would have no prospect whatever of seeing him alive’.”
“Sunday, Nov. 29th. Brighton. Reached home about 10.30 a.m. yesterday (after a rush through Dublin, Cork, etc.) to find that he had died ten days even before that letter arrived. Nov. 6th. 9.50 a.m.”
It seems a pity for her own sake that S. J.-B. could not have been with her Father during those last days of his life, for his was certainly one of the cases in which
“The soul’s dark cottage, battered and decayed, Lets in new light through chinks that Time has made.”
It is no very uncommon experience to see people go through their last illness without a word of complaint, but Mr. Jex-Blake rose to a higher level than that. He had felt the end approaching for some months, and had set his house in perfect order, even to the refinement of writing farewell letters—beautiful letters they are—to be delivered to those nearest him after he had left them. There was nothing now to be done save to gather himself together for the great ordination of death. “I suppose this is about as bad as can be,” he said to the surgeon who attended him. “Nothing more can be done, I take it.”