I perceive, with gladness, a keener
insight in myself, day by day; yet, after all, could not make
a good statement this morning on the subject of beauty.'
She had, indeed, a rude strength, which, if it could have been
supported by an equal health, would have given her the efficiency of
the strongest men. As it was, she had great power of work. The account
of her reading in Groton is at a rate like Gibbon's, and, later, that
of her writing, considered with the fact that writing was not grateful
to her, is incredible. She often proposed to her friends, in the
progress of intimacy, to write every day. 'I think less than a daily
offering of thought and feeling would not content me, so much seems
to pass unspoken.' In Italy, she tells Madame Arconati, that she has
'more than a hundred correspondents;' and it was her habit there to
devote one day of every week to those distant friends. The facility
with which she assumed stints of literary labor, which veteran feeders
of the press would shrink from,--assumed and performed,--when her
friends were to be served, I have often observed with wonder, and
with fear, when I considered the near extremes of ill-health, and
the manner in which her life heaped itself in high and happy moments,
which were avenged by lassitude and pain.
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