Before she had been long in Richmond she was seized with an illness which caused her many painful, wearisome days and nights.  Referring to this illness, in a letter to Miss Prentiss, she writes: 

It is dull music being sick away from one’s mother, but I have a knack at submitting myself to my fate; so my spirit was a contented one, and I was not for a moment unhappy, except for the trouble which I gave those who had to nurse me.  I thought of you, at least two-thirds of the time.  As my little pet, Lily L., said to me last night, when she had very nearly squeezed the breath out of my body, “I love you a great deal harder than I hug you”; so I say to you—­I love you harder than I tell, or can tell you.  A happy New-Year to you, dear Anna.  How much and how little in those few old words!  Consider yourself kissed and good-night.

The “New Year” was destined to be a very eventful one alike to her friend and to herself.  She seemed to have a presentiment of it, at least in her own case, as some lines written on a blank leaf of her almanac for that year attest: 

  With mingling hope and trust and fear
  I bid thee welcome, untried year;
  The paths before me pause to view;
  Which shall I shun and which pursue? 
  I read my fate with serious eye;
  I see dear hopes and treasures fly,
  Behold thee on thy opening wing
  Now grief, now joy, now sorrow bring. 
  God grant me grace my course to run
  With one blest prayer—­His will be done.

A little journal kept by her during the following months gives bright glimpses of her daily life.  The entries are very brief, but they show that while devoted to the school, she also spent a good deal of time among her books, kept up a lively correspondence with absent friends, and contributed her full share to the entertainment of the household by “holding soirees” in her room, “reading to the girls,” writing stories for them, and helping to “play goose” and other games.

To Miss Anna S. Prentiss, Richmond, Feb. 22, 1843.

Thanks to the Father of his Country for choosing to be born in Virginia! for it gives us a holiday, and I can write to you, dearest of Annas.  You don’t know how delighted I was to get your long-watched-for letter.  You very kindly express the wish that you could bear some of my school drudgery with me.  I would not give you that, but you should have love from some of these warm-hearted damsels, which would make you happy even in the midst of toil and vexation.  I can’t think what makes my scholars love me so.  I’m sure it is a gift for which I should be grateful, as coming from the same source with all the other blessings which are about me.  I believe my way of governing is a more fatiguing one than that of scolding, fretting, and punishing.  There is a little bit of a tie between each of these hearts and mine—­and the least mistake on my part severs it forever; so I have to be exceedingly careful what I do and say.  This keeps me in a constant state of excitement and makes my pulse fly rather faster than, as a pulse arrived at years of discretion, it ought to do.  I come out of school so happy, though half tired to death, wishing I were better, and hoping I shall become so; for the more my scholars love me, the more I am ashamed that I am not the pink of perfection they seem to fancy me.