and wholly wanting in digestion. With the largest views as to the aims and destiny of her nation, she was obliged to see the timid and the pessimists work on while she was fettered. There are many who, because they cannot do the great things, refuse to do the little ones; she was ready to lavish herself on the smallest; no one ever saw a more devoted daughter, sister, friend; and only her diary and a very few intimates knew how much this cost her or how she yearned for something more. With inexorable frankness she saw that even her resignation was often a kind of despair, even the alms she gave were only a miserable substitute for the larger work she longed to do; and thus much she often expressed, not only to herself but to others.
She thought that we human beings ought not, as she wrote to Mr. Emerson Gin 18389), “to suppress the worst or select the best of ourselves,” but to be “altogether better.” Even her own good deeds thoroughly dissatisfied her, and she often points out in her diaries that what passes for virtue in her is only the resigned acceptance of what seems to her subordinate and unsatisfactory. Her life, so far from being selfish, overflowed with constant acts of private kindness; she was incessantly bearing burdens for others, but she was haunted, as many other strong natures have been, by the spirit of Emerson’s couplet, —
“He who feeds men serveth few,
He serves all who dares be true.”
