im last evening, I could not help feeling that I knew
nothing as he knows that, and thinking that if there are infant schools
in the next world, I should certainly be put into one of them.

I hope the weather will allow you to sit often on the piazza in the
coming month. It is what we have not been able to do in the present
month at all,--by a fire, rather, in the parlor, half the time.

. . . With our affectionate remembrances to those around you, hold me to
be, as ever,

Yours, ORVILLE DEWEY.

[292] To his Daughter Mary.

ST. DAVID'S, Oct. 28, 1866.

DEAREST MOLLY,--I have the pleasure to be seated at my desk to write
to you, in my new gown and slippers, and with my new sermon, finished,
before me. A "combination and a form," indeed, but I say no more. "But
how is the sermon?" you 'll say. Why, as inimitable as the writer. But
really, I think it is worth something. I did think, indeed, when I took
my pen, that I could write a stronger argument for immortality than I
ever saw, that is, in any one sermon or thesis. And if I have failed
entirely, and shall come to think so, as is very likely, it will be
no worse, doubtless, than my presumption deserved. You and K., who
are satisfied with your spiritual instincts, would think it no better,
probably, than a belt of sand to bolster up a mountain. Well, every one
must help himself as he can. This meditation certainly has strengthened
my own faith in the immortal life.

I should like to go to church with you this morning, where you are
probably going; but the places are very few where I should want to
go. More and more do all public services dissatisfy me,--all devout
utterances, my own included. Communion with the Highest, with the Unseen
and Unspeakable, seems to me to consist of breathings, not words, and
requires a freedom of all thoughts and feelings,--of awe and wonder, of
adoration and thanksgiving, of meditations and of stirrings of the deeps
within us, such as can with difficulty be brought into a regular prayer.

[293] To the Same.

Nov. 21, 1866.

THE last "Register" has a sermon in it of Abbot's upon the Syracuse
Conference, which I thought so excellent, that I told the editor it was
itself worth a quarter's payment. Your mother admires it, too. Though
she has no sympathy, as you well know, with Abbot's Left-Wing views, her
righteous nature warmly takes part with his argument. The fact is, the
Conference is wrong. If it expects the young men to act wit