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Page 50
Natural history brought her some of her dearest friends. Dr. Johnston,
of Berwick-on-Tweed, to whom she dedicated the first volume of the
_Parables from Nature_, was one of these; and with Dr. Harvey (author of
the _Phycologia Britannica_, &c.) she corresponded for ten years before
they met. Like herself, he combined a playful and poetical fancy with
the scientific faculty, and they had sympathy together in the
distinctive character of their religious belief, and in the worship of
God in His works. But these, and many others, have "gone
before."
One of her "collections" was an unusual one. Through nearly forty years
she collected the mottoes on old sun-dials, and made sketches of the
dials themselves. In this also she had many helpers, and the collection,
which had swelled to about four hundred, was published last year.
Amateur bookbinding and mowing were among the more eccentric of her
hobbies. With the latter she infected Mr. Tennyson, and sent him a light
Scotch scythe like her own.
The secret of her success and of her happiness in her labours was her
thoroughness. It was a family joke that in the garden she was never
satisfied to dabble in her flower-beds like other people, but would
always clear out what she called "the Irish corners," and attack bits of
waste or neglected ground from which everybody else shrank. And amongst
our neighbours in the village, those with whom, day after day, time
after time, she would plead "the Lord's controversy," were those with
whom every one else had failed. Some old village would-be sceptic, half
shame-faced, half conceited, who had not prayed for half a lifetime, or
been inside a church except at funerals; careworn mothers fossilized in
the long neglect, of religious duties; sinners whom every one else
thought hopeless, and who most-of all counted themselves so--if
God indeed permits us hereafter to bless those who led us to
Him here, how many of these will rise up and call her blessed!
Her strong powers of sympathy were not confined to human beings alone. A
more devoted lover of "beasts" can hardly exist. The household pets were
about her to the end; and she only laughed when the dogs stole the bread
and butter from her helpless hands.
Her long illness, perhaps, did less to teach us to do without her, than
long illnesses commonly do; because her sick-room was so little like a
sick-room, and her interests never narrowed to the fretful circle of
mere invalid fears and fancies. The strong sense of humour, which never
left her, helped her through many a petty annoyance; and to the last she
kept one of her most striking qualities, so well described by Trench--
---- "a child's pure delight in little things."
Whatever interest this little record of some of my mother's tastes and
acquirements may have for her young readers, its value must be in her
example.
Whatever genius she may have had, her industry was far more remarkable.
The pen of a ready writer is not grasped by all fingers, and gifts are
gifts, not earnings. But to cultivate the faculties God has
given us to His glory, to lose petty cares, ignoble pleasures, and small
grievances, in the joy of studying His great works, to be good to His
creatures, to be truthful beyond fear or flattery, to be pure of heart
and tongue far beyond the common, to keep up an honest, zealous war with
wickedness, and never to lose heart or hope for wicked men--these things
are within the power as well as the ambition of us all.
I must point out to some of the young aspirants after her literary fame,
that though the date in Elizabeth Smith's _Remains_ shows my mother to
have been only eleven years old when she got it, and though she worked
and studied indefatigably all her girlhood, her first original work was
not published till she was forty-two years old.
Of the lessons of her long years of suffering I cannot speak. A form of
paralysis which left her brain as vigorous as ever, stole the cunning
from her hand, and the use of her limbs and voice, through ten years of
pain and privation, in which she made a willing sacrifice of her powers
to the will of God.
If some of her magazine children who enjoy "advantages" she never had,
who visit places and see sights for which she longed in vain, and who
are spared the cross she bore so patiently, are helped by this short
record of their old friend, it may somewhat repay the pain it has cost
in writing.
Trench's fine sonnet was a great favourite of my mother's--
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