e was out of town on my sickest day. When
he was at home he did everything in the world he could do to keep the
children still, but here they must be and I must direct about every
trifle and have them on the bed with me. I am getting desperate and feel
disposed to run furiously in the traces till I drop dead on the way.
Don't think me very wicked for saying so. I am jaded in soul and body
and hardly know what I do want. If T. comes, George, at all events, will
get relief and that will take a burden from my mind.... I want Lina to
come this summer. There is a splendid swing on iron hooks under a tree,
at the house we are going to move into. Won't that be nice for Jeanie
and Mary's other children, if they come? I wish I had a little fortune,
not for myself but to gather my "folks" together with. I shall not write
you, my dear, another complaining letter; do excuse this.

This letter shows the extremity of her trouble; but it is a picture,
merely. The reality was something beyond description; only young
mothers, who know it by experience, can understand its full meaning.
Now, however, the storm for a while abated. The young relative, whose
loving devotion had ministered to the comfort of her dying mother, came
to her own relief and passed the next six months at New Bedford, helping
take care of Eddy. In the course of the spring, too, his worst symptoms
disappeared and hope took the place of fear and despondency. Referring
to this period, his mother writes in Eddy's journal:

On the Saturday succeeding his birth, we heard of my dear mother's
serious illness, and, when he was about three weeks old, of her death.
We were not surprised that his health suffered from the shock it thus
received. He began at once to be affected with distressing colic, which
gave him no rest day or night. His father used to call him a "little
martyr," and such indeed he was for many long, tedious months. On the
16th of February, the doctor came and spent two hours in carefully
investigating his case. He said it was a most trying condition of
things, and he would gladly do something to relieve me, as he thought
I had been through "enough to _kill ten men_." ... When Eddy was about
eight months old, the doctor determined to discontinue the use of
opiates. He was now a fine, healthy baby, bright-eyed and beautiful, and
his colic was reducing itself to certain seasons on each day, instead of
occupying the whole day and night as heretofore. We went thro