"My object in fitting myself for the ministry is to be able to
carry the message of Unitarianism to my brother-laborers, because I
believe it will make better men--and women too--of them.... I began
to work when I was but a little more than eleven years old, and
since that time I have been my own teacher."
A lady in Ohio sends her "Register" regularly (the arrangement being
made through Miss Ellis) to the correspondent who wrote her this letter
of thanks:--
"I have long postponed the note of thanks I have meant to send you.
But when I tell you that I am a dressmaker, you will pardon me, I
am sure. This is my harvest season, and I am extremely busy. Being
one of the class of work-women who put _themselves_ into what they
do, I am exhausted at night, and forced to make Sunday a day of
rest indeed.
"The papers do come regularly, to my great joy. I assure you that
the pleasure and spiritual strength I get from them, if you could
realize it, would compensate you for the trouble an hundred-fold. My
business, showing me so plainly the small foibles and weaknesses of
human nature, and necessarily binding one's thoughts in large
measure to 'band, gusset, and seam, seam, gusset, and band,' or
their equivalents of flounces and gores, tends to a wearisome
narrowing of the mind; a half-hour spent after work is done, with
the 'Register,' opens a window, as it were, into heaven.
"I live alone. At times my isolation is hard to bear; but having
seen better days, as the saying goes, to me my deprivations are but
part of the discipline that God saw was needful for me. I am shut
off, by reason of serving the public, from the society of my equals
in education and breeding, and for that of my equals in station I
have no taste. _Pardonnez-moi_ these personal details; I give them
that you may know how much good you are doing. Long may you be
spared the power and the will to do such kindness to those who need.
We may never meet on earth, but I trust we shall in heaven."