To the Same.
ST. DAVID'S, March 7, 1872.
DEAR FRIEND--OF ALL MANKIND,--I see you have let them make you
President of the Bellevue Local Visiting Association. Was there nobody
else that could take that charge? Was it not enough for you to have the
Forty-ninth Street Hospital to look after? But M. says, "Let her; let
her work." And she talks about "living while you live," and comes at me
with such saws. Saws they may well be called, for they sever prudence
from virtue, instead of making them a rounded whole. The fact is,
nobody has any sense--I mean the perfect article--but me. For I say,
what if "living while you live" comes to not living at all? Is that
what you call working? And why not let other people work? Is Mrs. Lane
to be made the queen bee of New York philanthropy, and to become such
an enormous conglomeration of goodness [319] that she can't get out of
her hospital hive to visit her friends, nor let them visit her, with
any chance of seeing her? And is nobody worth caring for unless he has
been knocked down in the street, and has got a broken leg or a fever?
I am quite serious, though you may not think so. I do not like your
taking another hospital, or the visitation of it, in charge. It must
devolve an immense deal of care and thinking upon somebody. There 's
reason in all things, or ought to be. Your brains and eyes ought to be
spared from overwork. We shall hear of you as blind or paralytic next.
Tell your mother that we have to "stand to our colors" for the climate
of New England nowadays, else they would be all blown away. It 's
awful weather in New York too, I hope. I don't go out much. Really, if
this March were not-a march to spring, it would be a hard campaign.
With love to all your house, I am, as affectionately and warmly as the
weather will permit,
Yours,