The introduction to the book our late woman of letters had begun to compose, yielding to the insistence of family and friends: a record of the social, cultural, and political events and developments of the last half century...
...Why, why did death hasten to take her, depriving us, after her, of this precious literary treasure?..
At last, at last, Providence has supplied me with the strength to break free of my perplexity and to bow to the will of my children, and of the other friends, women and men, who—whenever the claims of illness pressed hard upon me—pressed hard upon me in their turn with the necessity of setting down my memories and gathering the scattered pieces of what has been published of mine in the papers over the years—even though time, to my eyes, has eaten and drunk over them.
In vain did I try to persuade them that times have changed and will no longer be content with anything but what keeps pace with them in novelty, mastery, and soaring flight—but to no avail. It is as though they—clinging to their opinion in this fashion—sense the nearness of my sun's setting, and wish me to leave them something new of my own self, something to lay their hands upon after I am gone, "for remembrance," even should that remembrance come to them sickly and frail as the hand that is to weave its threads!!
As for outright refusal, that would require a great measure of naked courage, together with a declaration of the private, many-branching reasons calling for it. And this, I have no doubt, would stir up sorrows and grief on both sides...
Yes, my children, and those in close touch with me, know the full extent of the bodily and spiritual pains I endure; and yet they look the other way, and persist untiring in their insistence and their urging...
Oh, their love! and their noble eagerness—whose ardor the passing of the years has not lowered—to cheer me by every way and means that so often captured my affections in days gone by and gladdened my feelings...
Have they not known, ever since they were small, that speaking to the daughters of my country—whether with my pen or with my tongue—has been my one favorite diversion in every stage of my life?!!..
And so, after much give and take—not always free of argument—I carried this idea with me yesterday evening and took it to pillow with me in my permanent abode—my bed—though not to sleep, of course. The idea itself kept visiting me the whole night long, now keeping me company with the true love and overflowing tenderness that ran all through it, now tormenting me with my present state: this unrelenting emaciation, the total weakness of my body, and my mind's unfitness for any intellectual activity worthy of being set down and of enduring!!
Thus I remained in this state, my thought and fancy
divided, until the breaking of the deep dawn—that interval which follows the darkness and makes itself ready to receive the sun of day.
It is, upon my life, an interval very dear to me, being the only one left to me in which to collect my thoughts and to draw up a plan of work to follow in the day to come—though it does not exceed twenty or thirty minutes at the very most, depending on the sleeping remedy I may have called to my aid beforehand!!
But on this particular morning my situation changed entirely. I greeted it drained of strength by that night heavy-laden with perplexity and hesitation; and no sooner had the lights of day looked in upon me through the windows than I took hold of myself and sat up straight in my bed, resolved with a firm and final resolve not to greet another such morning without having in hand my final answer on
the matter.
Then I rose with my other self toward that higher power, toward God Almighty, seeking from Him the inspiration for the first step I must take to complete the mission I chose for myself from the moment I first felt my own existence. It was
but a moment before I seized my pen and took up a stray scrap of paper that had lost its way onto the little bedside table alongside my bed. Upon it I set down—though with the utmost difficulty—the subject that had descended upon me like something akin to revelation: "From the Gleanings of Dawn"; and at once I appended to it the two following sentences, that they might be the prop on which my thinking could lean when thought stumbles and resolve gives way.
The first: Life is far too precious to be crushed by fear and failure before we breathe our last breath at the command of the Being who said to us: "Be"—and we were.
The second: Any work we perform, however lowly, is better than stagnation, or than troubled, wavering perplexity.
And so, from this day forward, I shall go gently on, adding a few lines at the rise of every dawn. I call God and my conscience to witness that the service of "the daughter of my country" accompanies my every breath, and that the love of sincere production,