in the Rockaway marshes. The children are all well and as gay as
larks.

Early in November the corner-stone of the Church of the Covenant was
laid. She wrote the following hymn for the occasion:

A temple, Lord, we raise;
Let all its walls be praise
To Thee alone.
Draw nigh, O Christ, we pray,
To lead us on our way,
And be Thou, now and aye,
Our corner-stone.

In humble faith arrayed,
We these foundations laid
In war's dark day.
Oppression's reign o'erthrown,
Sweet peace once more our own,
Do Thou the topmost stone
Securely lay.

And when each earth-built wall
Crumbling to dust shall fall,
Our work still own.
Be to each faithful heart
That here hath wrought its part,
What in Thy Church Thou art--
The Corner-stone.

* * * * *

III.

Happiness in her Children. The Summer of 1864. Letters from Hunter.
Affliction among Friends.

In the early part of 1864 she was more than usually afflicted with
neuralgic troubles and that "horrid calamity," as she calls it,
sleeplessness. "I know just how one feels when one can't eat or sleep or
talk. I declare, a good deal of the time pulling words out of me is like
pulling out teeth."

Still (she writes to a sister-in-law, Jan. 15th), we are a happy family
in spite of our ailments. I suffer a great deal and cause anxiety to my
husband by it, but then I enjoy a great deal and so does he, and
our younger children--to say nothing of A.--are sources of constant
felicity. Do not you miss the hearing little feet pattering round the
house? It seems to me that the sound of my six little feet is the very
pleasantest sound in the world. Often when I lie in bed racked with pain
and exhausted from want of food--for my digestive organs seem paralysed
when I have neuralgia--hearing these little darlings about the house
compensates for everything, and I am inexpressibly happy in the mere
sense of possession. I hate to have them grow up and to lose my pets, or
exchange them for big boys and girls. I suppose your boys are a great
help to you and company too, but I feel for you that you have not also
a couple of girls.... Poor Louisa! It is very painful to think what she
suffered. Her death was such a shock to me, I can hardly say why, that I
have never been since what I was before. I suppose my nervous system was
so shattered, that so unexpected a blow would naturally work unkindly.