happiest, most untiring
activity of both hands and brain. During the month of January she wrote
the larger portion of a new serial for The Christian at Work. It would
seem as if she foresaw the end approaching and was pressing toward it
with eager steps and a glad heart.

_To her eldest Son, New York, Jan. 28, 1877._

The great event of last week was cousin Charles' unexpected death. [14]
Your father and I attended the funeral, in his church, which was crowded
to overflowing with a weeping audience. Most of the ministers we know
were there. Cousin G. came on Friday night and said nothing would
comfort him like hearing your father preach and he promised to do so. I
went with him to Inwood, and we have just got back. Your father preached
a beautiful sermon and paid a glowing tribute to cousin Charles in it,
and I am very glad I went. After the funeral yesterday I came home and
put up some chicken-jelly I had made for Prof. Smith, and carried it
down to him; there I met Dr. Gould, of Rome, who had seen him, and said
he considered his case a very critical one. _Feb. 4th_.--Your father was
invited to repeat his lecture on Recollections of Hurstmonceux and Rydal
Mount, and did so, yesterday morning, in our lecture-room, which was
filled with a fine audience, mostly strangers. What have you on your
natural bracket? And have you put up your leaves on your windows?
Mine are looking splendidly. H. is burning one of them with a
magnifying-glass your father gave me at Christmas. The sun does lie
delightfully in this room. I must now go to the Smiths. All send love.

Prof. Smith passed away peacefully in the early morning on the 7th of
February. One of his last conscious utterances was addressed to Mrs.
Prentiss: "I have ceased to cumber myself with the things of time and
sense, and have had some precious thoughts about death." Henry Boynton
Smith was one of those men who enrich life by their presence, and seem
to render the whole world poorer by their absence. He was strongly
attached to Mrs. Prentiss; for more than forty years the relation
between him and her husband resembled that of brothers; Mrs. Smith was
one of her oldest and most beloved friends, and for a quarter of a
century the two families had dwelt together in unity. And, then, with
one of the saddest and one of the happiest events of her domestic
history--the burial of her little Bessie, at which he ministered with
Christlike sympathy, and at the baptism of her Swiss