here is nobody
here to whom I can speak confidingly, and my hidden spirit will have to
sit with folded wings for eight months to come. To whom shall I talk
about you, pray? On the way hither I fell in love with a little girl who
also fell in love with me, and as I sat with her over our lonely fire at
Philadelphia and in Washington, I could not help speaking of you now and
then, till at last she suddenly looked up and asked me if you hadn't a
brother, which question effectually shut my mouth. In a religious point
of view I am sadly off here. There is a different atmosphere in the
house from what there used to be, and I look forward with some anxiety
to the future.

The "little girl" referred to received soon after a letter from Miss
Payson. In enclosing it to a friend, more than thirty-seven years later,
she wrote: "I cried bitterly when she left us for Richmond. She was out
and out good and true. When my father was taking leave of us, the
last night in Washington, she proposed that as we had enjoyed so
much together, we should not separate without a prayer of thanks
and blessing-seeking, a proposal to which my father most heartily
responded." Here is an extract from the letter:

When I look over my school-room I am frequently reminded of you, for my
thirty-six pupils are, most of them, about your age. I have some very
lovable girls under my wing. I should be too happy if there were no
"unruly members" among these good and gentle ones; but in the little
world where I shall spend the greater part of the next eight months, as
well as in the great and busy one, which as yet neither you or I know
much about, I fancy there are mixtures of "the just and the unjust," of
"the evil and the good." We have a very pleasant family this year. The
youngest (for I omit the black baby in the kitchen) we call Lily. She
is my pet and plaything, and is quite as affectionate as you are. Then
comes a damsel named Beatrice, who has taken me upon _trust_ just as you
did. You may be thankful that your parents are not like hers, for she is
to be educated _for the world_; music, French and Italian crowd almost
everything else out of place, and as for religious influences, she is
under them here for the first time. How thankful I feel when I see such
cases as this, that God gave me pious parents, who taught me from my
very birth, that His fear is the _beginning_ of wisdom! My room-mate we
call Kate. She is pious, intelligent, and very warm-hearted