"Remember, dear friend," says a correspondent, "that
you carry an unusual responsibility. The nation is
interested in what you do. If you win your diploma,
your enemies lose and your friends gain one very
important point in the great argument for equal
rights. When you shall have demonstrated that you
have equal powers, then equal rights will come in
due time. The work which you have chosen, and from
which you cannot now flinch without dishonor, proves
far more important than either you or me (Faculty at
A. U.) at first conceived. Like all great things its
achievement will involve much of trial and hardship."
Alas! how true! What a trial it is to be socially
ostracized, to live in the very midst of life and
yet be lonely, to pass day after day without saying
perhaps a single word other than those used in the
section-room during a recitation. How hard it is to
live month after month without even speaking to woman,
without feeling or knowing the refining influence of
her presence! What a miserable existence!
Oh! 'tis hard, this lonely living, to be
In the midst of life so solitary,
To sit all the long, long day through and gaze
In the dimness of gloom, all but amazed
At the emptiness of life, and wonder
What keeps sorrow and death asunder.
'Tis the forced seclusion most galls the mind,
And sours all other joy which it may find.
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