ed, makes the story
like tragedy; and I read on and on, the same thing over and over, and
don't skip a page. But Mrs.--has just been in, and sat down and opened
her widowed heart to me, and I see that life itself is often a more
solemn tragedy than voyaging in the Arctic Seas. Nay, I think the deacon
himself, when he accepted that challenge (how oddly it sounds!), must
have felt himself to be in a more tragic strait than "Smith's Strait,"
or any other that Kane was in.

Your letters came Saturday evening, and were, by that time, an
indispensable comfort. . . .

This will be with you before the Thanksgiving dinner. Bless it, and you
all, prayeth, giving thanks with and for you,

Your

ORVILLE DEWEY.

[247]Mr. Dewey had been asked repeatedly, since his retirement from New
York, to take charge of Church Green, in Boston, a pulpit left vacant by
the death of Dr. Young; and he consented to go there in the beginning of
1858, with the understanding that he should preach but once on a Sunday.
He had an idea of a second service, which should be more useful to the
people and less exhausting to the minister than the ordinary afternoon
service, which very few attended, and those only from a sense of duty.
He had written for this purpose a series of "Instructions," as he called
them, on the 104th Psalm. Each was about an hour long, and they were,
in short, simple lectures on religious subjects. To use his own words,
"This was not preaching, and was attended with none of the exhaustion
that follows the morning service. Many people have no idea, nor even
suspicion, of the difference between praying and preaching for an hour,
with the whole mind and heart poured into it, and any ordinary public
speaking for an hour. They seem to think that in either case it is vox
et preterea nihil, and the more voice the more exhaustion; but the truth
is, the more the feelings are enlisted in any way, the more exhaustion,
and the difference is the greatest possible."

[248] To William Cullen Bryant, Esq.

BOSTON, Sept. 7, 1858.

DEAR BRYANT,-You have got home. If you pronounce the charm-word four
times after the dramatic (I mean the true dramatic) fashion, all is
told. It makes me think of what Mrs. Kemble told us the other day. In
a play where she acted the mistress, and her lover was shot,--or
was supposed to be, but was reprieved, and came rushing to her
arms,--instead of repeating a long and pretty speech which was set down
for her, the