[FROM A LETTER]
... All that you say about your finding your own best expression in
and through the little life which is confided to you is good and true,
and I am so happy to see how you feel on the subject. I think a
mother who devotes herself to her child, in watching its culture and
keeping it from baleful influences, is educating and cultivating
herself at the same time. No artist work is so high, so noble, so
grand, so enduring, so important for all time, as the making of
character in a child, You have your own work to do, the largest
possible expression. No statue, no painting, no acting, can reach it,
and it embodies each and all the arts, Clay of God's fashioning is
given into your hands to mould to perfectness. Is this not something
grand to think of? No matter about yourself--only make yourself
worthy of God's sacred trust, and you will be doing His work--and that
is all that human beings ought to care to live for. Am I right?