From collection Frances Willard Journal Transcripts
"Give to the winds thy fears" (Bess says for my benefit since I've "borrowed trouble" a bit this time though I did not when she went over.) Two telegrams from Liverpool "Coming-9 PM from London." We put a light in every window from base to dormitory and japanese lights were wreathed around the door.[entry continues in space for 11/4] Isabel came in full of smiles and cheery intonations greeting us all gathered there at-the door- Somerset, tall handsome fellow just behind her. I felt that somehow Mother & Yolande were not far off from these who had come back to us over the pitiless sea. We talked till 2-somehow we - had to "go over the Convention."
[I see all this was writ afore!] [FEW's brackets]
Well, Isabel kept quiet and on Saturday was occupied with "one of her headaches." HWS& Alys came to lunch & we went riding but the sunny skies of Haslemere are changed to solemn gray. Bess is a heart's ease & Nannie is coming soon-though a cable says not on the 8th. It is so quiet & serene one would think we had not been away.
November 5, 1893
My room has 3 new windows Jack the bull finch is here but never peeps; the beautiful ivy tree has been taken into the garden; the park set with broom& gorse; the front door window shaded; Isabel, like me, must be always making things look better.
-It is so good to think of them in harmony now at the Temple beautiful!
My salary & stenographer fund cut down $600 on account of hard times-Nan sends disquieting accounts of the exchequer of W.C.T.U. Arthur & Somey here all day-an occupation in itself'for C.C. How grateful & glad she is to have her son home again & so improved in health& manliness.
November 6, 1893 [Following written in space for Monday 11/6 but probably is Sunday, 11/5]
Somehow, though I do not go to church. I think I never had a more God-smitten consciousness than now. I cannot see the sunshine but it is to me God's Spirit's emblem; all the laws of nature so far as I have learned them, are to me living lines leading to our Heavenly Father. Nothing is temporary or profane. Thought is all-matter is thought that has cooled; we are in eternity as much as we ever shall be; the Kingdom of Heaven is within us; the veil grows thin; Mother seems my guardian angel; I have no such horror of the world to come as in my cruder years but the universe seems home and the throbbing heavens fully of happy beings& all of us, the two footed, & the four footed on our way to something better- growing on & up toward God.
November 7, 1893
Hard at work all day on articles, letters to Women's mtg for
