o
away from the children and from the salt water, but I do not believe it
would do me a bit of good. I want you to see my dear little boy. He is
now nineteen months old and as fat and well as can be. He is a beautiful
little fellow, we think, and very interesting. He is as gallant to A.
as you please, and runs to get a cushion for her when their supper is
carried in, and won't eat a morsel himself till he sees her nicely
fixed. George has gone to Boston, and I am lonely enough. I would write
another sheet if I dared, but I don't dare.

What she here says of her happiness, amidst the trials of the previous
winter, is repeated a little later in a letter to her husband:

I can truly say I have not spent a happier winter since our marriage, in
spite of all my sickness. It seems to me I can never recover my spirits
and be as I have been in my best days, but what I lose in one way
perhaps I shall gain in another. Just think how my ambition has been
crushed at every point by my ill-health, and even the ambition to be
useful and a comfort to those about me trampled underfoot, to teach me
what I could not have learned in any other school!

In the month of June she went on a visit to Newark, New Jersey, where
her husband's mother and sister now resided; Dr. Stearns having in the
fall of 1849 accepted a call to the First Presbyterian church in that
city. While she was in Newark news came of the dangerous illness, and,
soon after, of the death at Natchez of her brother-in-law, Mr. S. S.
Prentiss. The event was a great shock to her, and she knew that it would
be a crushing blow to her husband. Her letters to him, written at this
time, are full of the tender love and sympathy that infuse solace into
sorrow-stricken hearts. Here is an extract from one of them, dated July
11th:

I can't tell you how it grieves and distresses me to have had this
long-dreaded affliction come upon you when you were alone. Though I
could do so little to comfort you, it seems as if I _must_ be near
you.... But I know I am doing right in staying here--doing as you would
tell me to do, if I could have your direct wish, and you don't know how
thankful I am that it has pleased God to let me be with dear mother at a
time when she so needed constant affection and sympathy. Yes there are
wonderful mercies with this heavy affliction, and we all see and feel
them. Poor mother has borne all the dreadful suspense and then the
second blow of to-day far better than