together the
realities of life, the matter-of-fact interests of every-day existence
always attracted your sympathies more than mine; nor do I remember ever
hearing you mention, with the longing which possessed me, Italy, or the
shores of the Mediterranean.... If, as I believe, there is a special
Providence in "the fall of a sparrow," then your and my whereabouts are
not the result of accidental circumstance, but the providential
appointment of God. Dearest H----, your life's lesson just now is to be
taught you through variety of scene, the daily intercourse of your most
precious friend [Miss Dorothy Wilson], and the beautiful and lofty
influences of the countries in which you are traveling and sojourning:
and mine is to be learnt from a page as different as the chapters of
Lindley Murray's Grammar are different from those of a glorious,
illuminated, old vellum book of legends. I not only believe through my
intuitive instincts, but also through my rational convictions, that my
own peculiar task is the wholesomest and best for me, and though I
might desire to be with you in Italy, I am content to be without you in
America.... How much all separation and disappointment tend to draw us
nearer to God! To me upon this earth you seem almost lost--you, and
those yet nearer and dearer to me than yourself; your very images are
becoming dim, and vague, and blurred in outline to my memory, like faded
pictures or worn-out engravings. I think of you all almost as of the
dead, and the feverish desire to be once more with you and them, from
which I have suffered sometimes, is gradually dying away in my heart;
and now when I think of any of you, my dear distant ones, it is as
folded with me together in our Heavenly Father's arms, watched over by
His care, guarded over by His merciful love, and though my imagination
no longer knows where to seek or find you on earth, I meet you under the
shadow of His Almighty Wings, and know that we are together--now--and
forever.

[To those who know the rate of intercourse between Europe and
America now, these expressions of the painful sense of distance from
my country and friends, under which I suffered, must seem almost
incomprehensible,--now, when to go to Europe seems to most Americans
the easiest of summer trips, involving hardly more than a week's sea
voyage; when letters arrive almost every other day by some of the
innumerable steamers flying incessantly to and fro,