Page:Life of Octavia Hill as told in her letters.djvu/466

Harrogate, August 25th, 1880. To MRS. SHAEN. I have been very much delighted lately with some correspondence with some of my fellow-workers about the Artizans' Dwellings Acts. We had a great blow about the work itself just as I left town, one likely to create dissension and call up bad feeling ; and somehow the correspondence about it has, instead, shown how nobly men respond, when they manage to find the right way to look at things. I often wonder how men manage to get into such messes, when human hearts ring so true if struck rightly. It has been really quite beautiful to see how men will put temptation and bad feeling (even when almost justified) under their feet, when reminded of the cause for which they should work. I don't even know that it is a question of reminding. The good men see nobly and act ac- cordingly. I am obliged to keep very much out of all (even thought of) work. The home claims are very strong just now, and my own strength not very great. It is very strange to have to put the old things so wholly second. I do not know, however, how to be entirely sad about it. I often think that now people want more to see how noble private life should be, and can be, than to take up public work, at any. rate exclusively. Harrogate, September 4th, 1880. MRS. HILL TO MRS. EDMUND MAURICE. If you were to spend all your time from now till Christmas in guessing what Octavia was doing last Friday afternoon you would never guess aright, so I