Memorials of Agnes Elizabeth Jones / by her sister ; with introduction by Florence Nightingale.

  • Jones, J., Miss.
Date:
1871
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Memorials of Agnes Elizabeth Jones / by her sister ; with introduction by Florence Nightingale. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    55/534 (page 13)
    too much in my own strength, for in the course of the day I broke them all. ‘‘Nov. iiih.—Awoke and wept at having broken my resolutions.” These and such-like passages of her early journals have deeply impressed me with the thought that the tenderness of a child’s con- science is seldom realized by those who en- deavour to guide and direct it. May it not be that we sometimes lay a burden too heavy to be borne on young hearts, because we judge them by our own, which have grown hardened by contact with the world and its ways ? Some there assuredly are, whose hearts should be rather trained to look up with loving trust than to look into themselves for faults which they mourn over in vain while they struggle to amend in their own strength. And Agnes had a peculiarly sensitive conscience; the smallest fault she magnified into a sin, and grieved for it accordingly. Then from her reserve, and the power she had of concealing her emotion, no one knew of this hidden life, so that she had not the help she might have had. Yet this. I