"The scholar must be a solitary, laborious, modest, and charitable
soul. He must embrace solitude as a bride. He must have his glees
and his glooms alone. Go, scholar, cherish your soul; expel
companions; set your habits to a life of solitude; then will the
faculties rise fair and full within, like forest trees, field
flowers; you will have results, which, when you meet your fellow
men, you can communicate and they will gladly receive. It is the
noble, manly, just thought which is the superiority demanded of
you; and not crowds, but solitude, confers this elevation."
Next follows a page of "Paragraphs for Preachers." Evidently this year
sees the dying of the first hope to be a preacher, and the gradual dawn
of her life's real mission. Seven pages follow of "Prayers altered and
rearranged for my own use, from 'Dairy Praise and Prayer.'" Three or
four appropriate prayers are united in one, headed, "First evening,"
"First Morning," "Second Evening," etc. These were apparently prepared
for the lay services she had dreamed of holding. A page or two more, and
this entry, October 17, marks the dawning of the new hope: "Last week
received a very kind letter from Mr. Wendte, in which he stated, 'We
have made you chairman of a Book and Tract Table in the church;
'therefore I feel bound to return to attend to it." Further extracts
from the diary are:--
Saturday evening, J---- accidentally broke my audiphone. I felt
_lost_ then, but wouldn't let them know how badly I felt about it,
and even went to church without it, for fear they would feel hurt
about it. It came home mended, this evening.
_October 31._ Finished G----'s afghan, also completed the
embroidery of fourth skirt for Mrs. ----, and first of baby C----'s
mittens. Was quite interested in a letter of Mrs. ---- in
"Register" of last week on "The Woman's Auxiliary Conference." Hope
she _will_ succeed in establishing a Woman's Club for discussion
and debate in Cincinnati.
Miss F. Le Baron, whose friendship with Miss Ellis dates back to the
latter's residence in Chicago, writes that she has several letters from
Miss Ellis setting forth her desire to preach, but unfortunately they
are in a totally inaccessible place. This allusion, in the diary,
evidently points to the final renunciation of Miss Ellis's first
missionary impulse:--
_November 7._ A letter from Miss Le Baron, of Chicago, in regard to
my engaging in missionary work in the West. She finally closed with
the idea that I had come to myself. In a letter from A---- this
week she says to me, "_Our_ lot in life appears to be that of
patience and submission," which brings to my mind quite a sermon,
in other's words, which I hope to write out to-day. It is time to
prepare for church.... The thought suggested by A----'s letter with
regard to submission to our lot called to mind the passage William
Ellery Channing wrote to his friend Francis. "You seem to go upon
the supposition that our circumstances are determined by
Providence. I believe they are determined by ourselves. Man is the
artificer of his own fortunes. By exertion he can enlarge his
sphere of usefulness. By activity he can 'multiply himself.' It is
mind that gives him the ascendency in society; it is mind that
gives him power and ability. It depends upon himself to call forth
the energies of mind, to strengthen the intellect, to form
benevolence into a habit of the soul. The consequence I draw from
these principles is that Heaven, by placing me in particular
circumstances, has not assigned me a determinate sphere of
usefulness (as you seem to think), but that it is in my power, and
of course my duty, to spread the 'beams of my light' wider into the
'night of adversity.'"