herself very much.

Mrs. Gibbs, whose name occurs in this letter, was one of those
inestimable friends, who fulfill the office of mother, as it were, to
the young minister's wife. She was tenderly attached to Mrs. Prentiss
and her loving-kindness, which was new every morning and fresh every
evening, ceased only with her life. Her husband, the late Capt. Robert
Gibbs, was like her in unwearied devotion to both the pastor and the
pastor's wife.

The summer was passed in getting settled in her new home, and receiving
visits from old friends. Early in the autumn she spent several weeks in
Portland. After her return, Nov. 2, she writes to Miss Thurston:

I was in Portland after you had left, and got quite rested and recruited
after my summer's fatigue, so that I came home with health and strength,
if not to lay my hand to the plough, to apply it to the broom-handle and
other articles of domestic warfare. Just what I expected would befall me
has happened. I have got immersed in the whirlpool of petty cares and
concerns which swallow up so many other and higher interests, and
talk as anxiously about good "help" and bad, as the rest of 'em do. I
sometimes feel really ashamed of myself to see how virtuously I fancy I
am spending my time, if in the kitchen, and how it seems to be wasted if
I venture to take up a book. I take it that wives who have no love and
enthusiasm for their husbands are more to be pitied than blamed if they
settle down into mere cooks and good managers.... We have had right
pleasant times since coming home; never pleasanter than when, for a day
or two, I was without "help," and my husband ground coffee and drew
water for me, and thought everything I made tasted good. One of the
deacons of our church--a very old man--prays for me once a week at
meeting, especially that my husband and I may be "mutual comforts and
enjoyments of each other," which makes us laugh a little in our sleeves,
even while we say Amen in our hearts. We have been reading aloud Mary
Howitt's "Author's Daughter," which is a very good story indeed--don't
ask me if I have read anything else. My mind has become a complete
mummy, and therefore incapable of either receiving or originating a new
idea. I did wade through a sea of words, and nonsense on my way home in
the shape of two works of Prof. Wilson--"The Foresters" and "Margaret
Lindsay"--which I fancy he wrote before he was out of his mother's arms
or soon after leaving them. The girl