To fulfil these aims we must be able to answer the simple question promptly to ourselves: “What then shall I do tomorrow and today?” Then, the decision being made, the thing alone must have all the earnestness put into it of a creature who knows that the next moment he may be called to his account.
As a woman and a wife my first duty lies at home; to make that beautiful,—to stimulate the lives of others by exchange of ideas, and the repose of domestic life; to educate children and servants.
2nd, To be conversant with the very poor; to visit their homes; to be keenly alive to their sufferings; never allowing the thought of their necessities to sleep in our hearts.
3rd, By day and night, morning and evening, in all times and seasons when strength is left to us, to study, study, study.
Because I have put this last, it does not stand last in importance; but to put it first and write out the plan for study which my mind naturally selects would be to ignore that example of perfect life in which I humbly believe, and to return to the lives of the ancients, so fine in their results to the few, so costly to the many. But in the removed periods of existence, when solitude may be our blessed portion, what a joy to fly to communion with the sages and live and love with them!
I have written this out for the pleasure of seeing if “I distinctly understand what I wish.” It is a wide plan, too wide, I fear, for much performance, but therefore perhaps more conducive to a constant faith.
When Mrs. Fields wrote the “Personal Recollections” of Oliver Wendell Holmes which appear in her “Authors and Friends,” she quoted, with a few changes prompted by modesty, this passage from a letter received from him at Christmas, 1881: “Except a few of my immediate family connections, no friends have seen me so often as a guest as did you and your husband. Under your roof I have met more visitors to be remembered than under any other. But for your hospitality I should never have had the privilege of personal acquaintance with famous writers and artists whom I can now recall as I saw them, talked with them, heard them in that pleasant library, that most lively and agreeable dining-room. How could it be otherwise with such guests as he entertained with his own unflagging vivacity and his admirable social gifts?”