The Seven Little Sisters Who Live on the Round Ball That Floats in the Air | Page 4

work lay in her mind, growing, gathering to itself nourishment, and
organizing itself consciously or unconsciously by all the forces of her
unresting brain and all the channels of her study, until it sprung from
her pen complete at a stroke. She wrote good English, of course, and
would never sentimentalize, but went directly at the pith of the matter;
and, if she had few thoughts on a subject, she made but few words. I
don't think she did much by way of revising or recasting after her
thought was once committed to paper. I think she wrote it as she would
have said it, always with an imaginary child before her, to whose
intelligence and sympathy it was addressed. Her habit of mind was to
complete a thought before any attempt to convey it to others. This
made her a very helpful and clear teacher and leader. She seemed
always to have considered carefully anything she talked about, and
gave her opinion with a deliberation and clear conviction which
affected others as a verdict, and made her an oracle to a great many
kinds of people. All her plans were thoroughly shaped before execution;
all her work was true, finished, and conscientious in every department.
She did a great deal of quiet, systematic thinking from her early school
days onward, and was never satisfied until she completed the act of
thought by expression and manifestation in some way for the advantage

of others. The last time I saw her, which was for less than five minutes
accorded me by her nurse during her last illness, she spoke of a new
plan of literary work which she had in mind, and although she
attempted no delineation of it, said she was thinking it out whenever
she felt that it was safe for her to think. Her active brain never ceased
its plans for others, for working toward the illumination of the mind,
the purification of the soul, and the elevation and broadening of all the
ideals of life. I remember her sitting, absorbed in reflection, at the
setting of the sun every evening while we were at the House Beautiful
of the Peabodys [We spent nearly all our time at West Newton in a
little cottage on the hill, where Miss Elizabeth Peabody, with her
saintly mother and father, made a paradise of love and refinement and
ideal culture for us, and where we often met the Hawthornes and
Manns; and we shall never be able to measure the wealth of intangible
mental and spiritual influence which we received therefrom.] at West
Newton; or, when at home, gazing every night, before retiring, from her
own house-top, standing at her watchtower to commune with the starry
heavens, and receive that exaltation of spirit which is communicated
when we yield ourselves to the "essentially religious." (I use this phrase,
because it delighted her so when I repeated it to her as the saying of a
child in looking at the stars.)
No one ever felt a twinge of jealousy in Jane's easy supremacy; she
never made a fuss about it, although I think she had no mock modesty
in the matter. She accepted the situation which her uniform correctness
of judgment assured to her, while she always accorded generous praise
and deference to those who excelled her in departments where she
made no pretence of superiority.
There were some occasions when her idea of duty differed from a
conventional one, perhaps from that of some of her near friends; but no
one ever doubted her strict dealing with herself, or her singleness of
motive. She did not feel the need of turning to any other conscience
than her own for support or enlightenment, and was inflexible and
unwavering in any course she deemed right. She never apologized for
herself in any way, or referred a matter of her own experience or sole
responsibility to another for decision; neither did she seem to feel the
need of expressed sympathy in any private loss or trial. Her philosophy
of life, her faith, or her temperament seemed equal to every exigency of

disappointment or suffering. She generally kept her personal trials
hidden within her own heart, and recovered from every selfish pain by
the elastic vigor of her power for unselfish devotion to the good of
others. She said that happiness was to have an unselfish work to do,
and the power to do it.
It has been said that Jane's only fault was that she was too good. I think
she carried her unselfishness too often to a short-sighted excess,
breaking down her health, and thus abridging her opportunities for
more permanent advantage to those whom she would have died to serve;
but it was solely on her own responsibility, and in consequence of her
accumulative