lf-past five on
Friday afternoon. Dear Lizzy was at first quite overwhelmed, as I knew
she would be--for her attachment to her mother was uncommonly tender and
devoted; but she is now perfectly tranquil and will soon, I trust, be
able to think of her irreparable loss with a melancholy pleasure even.
There is much in the case that is peculiarly fitted to produce a
cheerful resignation. Mrs. Payson has been a severe sufferer; and since
the breaking up of her home in Portland, she has felt, I think, an
increasing detachment from the world. I was exceedingly struck with this
during her visit here last winter. She seemed to me to be fast ripening
for heaven. It is such a comfort to us that she was able to _name_ our
little boy! [8]

Mrs. Payson died in the 65th year of her age. She was a woman of most
attractive and admirable qualities, full of cheerful life and energy,
and a whole-hearted disciple of Jesus. A few extracts from Mrs.
Prentiss' letters will show how deeply she felt her loss. To her
youngest brother she writes:

How gladly I would go, if I could, to see you all, and talk over with
you the thousand things that are filling our minds and hearts! We can
not drain this bitter cup at one draught and then go on our way as
though it had never been. The loss of a mother is never made up or
atoned for; and ours was such a mother; so peculiar in her devotion and
tenderness and sympathy! I can not mourn that her sorrowful pilgrimage
is over, can not think for a moment of wishing she were still on earth,
weeping and praying and suffering--but for myself and for you and for
all I mourn with hourly tears. She has sacrificed herself for us.

To her friend, Miss Lord, she writes, Jan. 31:

It seems to me that every day and hour I miss my dear mother more and
more, and I feel more and more painfully how much she suffered during
her last years and months. Dear Louise, I thought I knew that she could
not live long, but I never realised it, and even now I keep trying to
hope that she has not really gone. Just in this very spot where I now
sit writing, my dear mother's great easy-chair used to sit, and here,
only a year ago, she was praying for and loving me. O, if I had only
_known_ she was dying then, and could have talked with her about heaven
till it had grown to seeming like a home to which she was going, and
whither I should follow her sooner or later! But it is all over and I
would not have her here again, if the shadow o