, and I love
her dearly. She is an orphan--Mrs. Persico's daughter ...

I am rather affectionate by nature, if not in practice, and though I
know that nearness to the Friend, whom I hope I have chosen, could make
me happy in any circumstances, I do not pretend to be above the desire
for earthly friends, provided He sees fit to give them to me. I believe
my father used to say that we could not love them too much, if we only
gave Him the first place in our hearts. Let us earnestly seek to make
Him our all in all. It is delightful, in the midst of adversities and
trials, to be able to say "There is none upon earth that I desire
besides Thee," but it requires more grace, I think, to be able to use
such language when the world is bright about us. You have known little
of sorrow as yet, but if you have given your whole, undivided heart to
God, you will not need affliction, or to have your life made so desolate
that "weariness must toss you to His breast." There is a bright side to
religion, and I love to see Christians walking in the sunshine. I trust
you have found this out for yourself, and that your hope in Christ makes
you happy in the life that now is, as well as gives you promise of
blessedness in that which is to come.

Before she had been long in Richmond she was seized with an illness
which caused her many painful, wearisome days and nights. Referring to
this illness, in a letter to Miss Prentiss, she writes:

It is dull music being sick away from one's mother, but I have a knack
at submitting myself to my fate; so my spirit was a contented one, and I
was not for a moment unhappy, except for the trouble which I gave those
who had to nurse me. I thought of you, at least two-thirds of the time.
As my little pet, Lily L., said to me last night, when she had very
nearly squeezed the breath out of my body, "I love you a great deal
harder than I hug you"; so I say to you--I love you harder than I tell,
or can tell you. A happy New-Year to you, dear Anna. How much and how
little in those few old words! Consider yourself kissed and good-night.

The "New Year" was destined to be a very eventful one alike to her
friend and to herself. She seemed to have a presentiment of it, at least
in her own case, as some lines written on a blank leaf of her almanac
for that year attest:

With mingling hope and trust and fear
I bid thee welcome, untried year;
The paths before me pause to view;
Which shall I shun and which purs