enduring so much. And so, though of silver
and gold I have not much, I send my mite, to help, the little that I
can, the voluntary contribution for your purposes.

Last Monday night [Alluding to the battle and rout of Bull Run, July
1861] was the bitterest time we have had yet some, even in this quiet
village, did not sleep a wink. Confound sensation newspapers and
newspaper correspondents that fellow who writes is enough to drive one
mad. The "Evening Post" is the wisest paper. But it is too bad that
that rabble of civilians and teamsters should have brought this apparent
disgrace upon us.

We have an immense amount of inexperience, and of rash, opinionated
thinking to deal with; but we shall get over it all.

If you are staying in New York, I wish you could run up and take a
little breathing-time with us. Come any time; we have always a bed for
you.

We are all well, and all unite in love to you and E.

Yours ever,

ORVILLE DEWEY.

To Miss Catherine M. Seagwick.

SHEFFIELD, Feb. 5, 1862.

My FRIEND,--I must report myself to you. I must have you sympathize with
my life, or--I will not say I shall drown myself in the Housatonic, but
I shall feel as if the old river had dried up, and forsaken its bed.

I do not know how to set about telling you how happy I am in the old
home. I feel as if I had arrived after a long voyage, or were reposing
after a day's [259] work that had been forty years long. Indeed, it is
forty-two years last autumn since I left Andover and began to preach.
And I have never before had any cessation of work but what I regarded as
temporary. Indeed, I have never before had the means to retire upon. And
although it is but a modest competence, $1,500 a year [FN: He had just
received a legacy of $5,000 from Miss Eliza Townsend, of Boston]-yet I
am most devoutly thankful to Heaven that I have it, and that I am not
turned out, like an old horse upon the common. To be sure, I should be
glad to be able to live nearer to the centres of society; but you can
hardly imagine what comfort and satisfaction I feel in having enough to
live upon, instead of the utter poverty which I might well have feared
would be, and which so often is, the end of a clergyman's life.'

This house of ours is very pleasant, you would think so if you were
in it,--all doors open, as in summer, a summer temperature from the
furnace, day and night, moderate wood-fires in the parlor and library,
cheering to the eye, and making