A month later we parted in Paris, Miss Starr to go back to Italy,
and I to journey on to London to secure as many suggestions as
possible from those wonderful places of which we had heard,
Toynbee Hall and the People's Palace. So that it finally came
about that in June, 1888, five years after my first visit in East
London, I found myself at Toynbee Hall equipped not only with a
letter of introduction from Canon Fremantle, but with high
expectations and a certain belief that whatever perplexities and
discouragement concerning the life of the poor were in store for
me, I should at least know something at first hand and have the
solace of daily activity. I had confidence that although life
itself might contain many difficulties, the period of mere
passive receptivity had come to an end, and I had at last
finished with the ever-lasting "preparation for life," however
ill-prepared I might be.
It was not until years afterward that I came upon Tolstoy's phrase
"the snare of preparation," which he insists we spread before the
feet of young people, hopelessly entangling them in a curious
inactivity at the very period of life when they are longing to
construct the world anew and to conform it to their own ideals.
[Editor: Mary Mark Ockerbloom]
This chapter has been put on-line as part of the BUILD-A-BOOK
Initiative at the Celebration of Women Writers.
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