Page:Life of Octavia Hill as told in her letters.djvu/355

 circumstances; but its spirit must have been influenced deeply by the deeds and words of all that group of men, among whom it pleased God to lead me, when life was just first presenting its puzzles to me. The form of much of your work has changed, died down, and withered, as forms often must; but the principles you were all teaching do not change; and now that many of them are understood by the younger generations, now that they who belong to those younger generations are coming forward so earnestly to work, grateful as I am for their help, and glad of their sympathy, there always remains to my mind a peculiar silent, more solemn, link with all who are associated with the earlier more difficult and lonely efforts of the past. It has pleased God to alter much since then. The voices that taught us are silent; but His voice still speaks; and, if He has made of the child who learned so much of the people (just from being one among them) now the leader of 3,000 tenants, He doesn't forbid that she should still be a child again, in thinking over the old days, and better still, in listening to His teaching.

re Swiss Cottage Fields? July 19th, 1875.

Thank you very much for your letter about the city. I saw Mr. Bond yesterday, and again had a long talk with him about the best way of proceeding; and we decided that, for the moment, we would let the big-monied people alone, till we are better worth their notice, and work among those who cannot give more at the utmost than £25 and £50. I believe (thank God!) more in nobodies than in "somebodies."