e bottom, they would all have jumped
up, exclaiming, "Beautiful! [303] beautiful!" People so like to have it
thought they have had a good time. One day they went up and all got as
wet as mountain--no, as marsh--rats; and that was the most "lovely time"
they have had this summer.

Girls, I have a toothache to-day! It 's easier now, or I should not be
writing. But pain, what a thing it is! The king of all misery, I think,
is pain. It is a part of you, and does n't lie outside; a thing to be
met and mastered with healthy faculties. You can't fight with it, as you
can with poverty, bankruptcy, mosquitoes, a smoky chimney, and the like.
I can't be thankful enough that I have had, through my life, so little
pain. What I shall do with it, if it comes, I don't know. Perhaps I need
it for what Heine speaks of; that is, to make me "a man." I am afraid I
am a chicken-hearted fellow. But I cannot help thinking that different
constitutions take that visitation very differently.

To Rev. Henry W. Bellows, D.D.

ST. DAVID'S, Jan. 18, 1869.

MY DEAR FRIEND,--. . . It is the audible, the uttered prayer, to which I
feel myself unequal. The awfulness of prayer to me inclines me more and
more to make it silent, speechless. It is so overwhelming, that I am
losing all fluency, all free utterance. What it is fit for a creature
to say to the Infinite One--to that uncomprehended Infinitude of
Being--makes me hesitate. My mind addressing a fellow mind is easy; and
yet addressing the highest mind in the world would cause me anxiety.
I should feel that my thoughts were too poor to express to him. But my
mind addressing itself, its [304] thought and feeling, to the Infinite,
Infinite Mind,--I faint beneath it. It is higher than heaven; what can
I do? I am often moved to say with Abraham, "Lo! now I, who am but dust,
have taken upon me to speak unto God. Oh! let not the Lord be angry, and
I will speak." And indeed, so much praying,-this imploring the love and
care of the Infinite Providence and Love, of which the universe is the
boundless and perpetual evolution,--can that be right and fit? I often
recall what Mrs. Dwight, of Stockbridge, said of the public devotions
of old Dr. West,--one of the most saintly beings I ever knew,--that she
had observed that they consisted less and less of prayers, and more and
more of thanksgivings.

Last evening my wife read to us your article on the Mission of America.
It is a grand, full stream of thought, and