oughly alive, that--that--how shall I end the
sentence? Why, thus, if you please,--that it seems to me as if I ought
to be there six months of the year, and that somebody ought to want me
to do something that would bring me there. But somebody,--who is that?
Why, nobody. You can't see him; you can't find him; Micawber never
caught him, though he was hunting for him all his life,--always hoped
the creature would turn up, though he never did.

Well, I 'm content. I am more, I am thankful. I have had, all my life,
the greatest blessing of life,--leave to work on the highest themes and
tasks, and I am not turned out, at the end, on to the bare common of the
world, to starve. I have a family, priceless to me. I have many dear and
good friends, and above all I have learned to draw nigh to a Friendship
which embraces the universe in its love and care, if one may speak so of
That which is almost too awful for mortal word. . . .

But leaving myself, and turning to you,--what a monstrous person you
are! a prodigy of labor, and a prodigy in some other ways that I could
point out. I always thought that the elastic spring in your nature was
[270] one of the finest I ever knew, but I did not know that it was
quite so strong. You, too, know of a faith that can remove mountains.

The Great Fair is one mountain. I hope you will get the "raffles"
question amicably settled. There is the same tempest in the Sheffield
teapot; for we have a fair on the 22d, and they have determined here
that they won't have raffles.

What made you think that I "dread public prayers "? Did I say anything
to you about it? If I did, I should not have used exactly the word
"dread." The truth is, that state of the mind which is commonly called
prayer becomes more and more easy, or at least inevitable to me; but the
action has become so stupendous and awful to me, that I more and more
desire the privacy in it of my own thoughts. "Prayers,"-"saying one's
prayers," grows distasteful to me, and a Liturgy is less and less
satisfying. Communion is the word I like better.

But I have touched too large a theme. With our love to E. and your
lovely children, let me be,

Always your friend,

ORVILLE DEWEY.

To Miss Catherine M. Sedgwick.

SHEFFIELD, Feb. 22, 1864.

DEAR FRIEND,--You are not well; I know you are not, or you would have
written to me; and indeed they told me so when I was in New York the
other day. I wrote you a good (?) long letter about New Year'