I found my practical experience of housekeeping and baby-tending
very useful to me afterwards at the West, in my sister Emilie's
family, when she was disabled by illness. I think, indeed, that
every item of real knowledge I ever acquired has come into use
somewhere or somehow in the course of the years. But these were
not the things I had most wished to do. The whole world of
thought lay unexplored before me,--a world of which I had already
caught large and tempting glimpses, and I did not like to feel
the horizon shutting me in, even to so pleasant a corner as this.
And the worst of it was that I was getting too easy and content-
ed, too indifferent to the higher realities which my work and my
thoughtful companions had kept keenly clear before me. I felt my-
self slipping into an inward apathy from which it was hard to
rouse myself. I could not let it go on so. I must be where my
life could expand.
It was hard to leave the dear little fellow I had taught to walk
and to talk, but I knew he would not be inconsolable.
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