From collection Frances Willard Journal Transcripts
obtain it but alas, alas! Temperament & [....] have got in th[..] work.
November 18, 1893
Working away with my "bike." It's a regular study in mental philosophy, Christian Science mind-cure and balance all in one. When I think I'm all right, or better still think nothing about it, I go nicely; when I waver in my mind wobble goes the machine. When I put before me a picture of my Mother, that great balanced character, & figure her holding a pair of balances in hand I go like a bird; when I think of the words "Reel to & fro & stagger like a drunken man"-over I go! There's more taught by the bike than meets the eye & ear.
Cossie home at night Saturday after 3 meetings. She works too hard.
November 19, 1893
We had Dr. A-B over Sunday at the Priory & Isabel & she canvassed the whole subject of an Industrial Home for Inebriate Women & agreed to go into the undertaking. The Dr. was a class mate of Annie Reid at Dr. Blackwell's Med. Coll. in New York; has been for years a missionary in China and later had Dr. Bernado's homes in charge-2 of them. She is smart but not magnetic. Bess went with her to Lady H's home for waif-girls in the P.M. At dinner she told us more of China than I have ever learned from books. "The wind & water spirit" [....] that people's hopes.
November 20, 1893
Cossie went away to visit the Somerstown tenants in a Deaconess' dress-she, Alys Smith and other leaders in the "Sisters of the people" work. She will stay tonight in the Deaconess Home there. Her article on her visit to the miners of Barnsley is published in the Westminster Gazette" with illustrations. There is no woman in England who is so loved & trusted by the masses. She is, as I was the first to predict!- ahem!-the Shaftesbury among women. Worked all day with stenographers and practised well on bicycle. Am ever so much better.
November 21, 1393
This A.M. Bess & I were called by our own order at 7- were dressed for the day & ready for breakfast by 8-at work by 8:30-two stenographers made things "hum." Bess used neither for she has a bad cold, but helped assort arrears and I cleared up until I could at least see my way through. Always I seem to come within handsbreadth of writing the speech, article, story or what not that I always have "in my mind's-eye Horatio!" but always
