Stearns. Her Character. Dangerous Illness of Prof. Smith.
Death at the Parsonage. Letters. A Visit to Vassar College. Letters.
Getting ready for General Assembly. "Gates Ajar."

A little past three o'clock on Saturday afternoon, January 2, 1869, Anna
S. Prentiss, wife of the Rev. Jonathan F. Stearns, D.D., fell asleep in
Jesus. The preceding pages show what strong ties bound Mrs. Prentiss to
this beloved sister. Their friendship dated back thirty years; it was
cemented by common joys and common sorrows in some of their deepest
experiences of life; and it had been kept fresh and sweet by frequent
intercourse and correspondence. Mrs. Stearns was a woman of uncommon
attractions and energy of character. She impressed herself strongly
upon all who came within the sphere of her influence; the hearts of her
husband's people, as well as his own and those of her children, trusted
in her; and the whole community where she dwelt mourned her loss. She
had been especially endeared to her brother Seargent, with whom she
spent several winters in the South prior to her marriage. Her influence
over him, at a critical period of his life, was alike potent and happy;
their relation to each other was, in truth, full of the elements of
romance; and some of his letters to her are exquisite effusions of
fraternal confidence and affection. [1] Her letters to him, beginning
when she was a young girl and ending only with his life, would form a
large volume. "You excel any one I know," he wrote to her, "in the
kind and gentle art of letter-writing." In the midst of his early
professional triumphs he writes:

You do not know what obligations I am under to you; I owe all my success
in this country to the fact of having so kind a mother and such sweet
affectionate sisters as Abby and yourself. It has been my only motive to
exertion; without it I should long since have thrown myself away. Even
now, when, as is frequently the case, I feel perfectly reckless both
of life and fortune, and look with contempt upon them both, the
recollection that there are two or three hearts that beat for me with
real affection, even though far away--comes over me as the music of
David did over the dark spirit of Saul. I still feel that I have
something worth living for.

For years her letters helped to cherish and deepen this feeling. He thus
refers to one of them:

I can not tell how much I thank you for it. I cried like a child while
reading it, and even now the