remedy against speculative
doubts and perplexities. When you are in the dark about this or
that point, ask what command does conscience impose upon me at this
moment--obey it and you will find light.

These extracts will suffice to show the quality and extent of her
reading. What sort of fruit her reading and study bore may be seen by
her articles on Claudius and Goethe, in the New York Review. No abler
discussion of the genius and writings of Goethe had at that time
appeared in this country; while the article on Claudius was probably the
first to make him known to American readers.

During many of the later years of her life Mrs. Hopkins was a martyr to
ill-health. The story of her sufferings, both physical and mental, as
artlessly told in little diaries which she kept, is "wondrous pitiful;"
no pen of fiction could equal its simple pathos. Again and again, as she
herself knew, she was on the very verge of insanity; nothing, probably,
saving her from it but the devotion of her husband, who with untiring
patience and a mother's tenderness ministered, in season and out of
season, to her relief. Often would he steal home from his beloved
Observatory, where he had been teaching his students how to watch the
stars, and pass a sleepless night at her bedside, reading to her and by
all sorts of gentle appliances trying to soothe her irritated nerves.
And this devotion ran on, without variableness or shadow of turning,
year after year, giving itself no rest until her eyes were closed in
death. [5]

Let us now resume our narrative. A portion of the summer of 1862 was
passed by Mrs. Prentiss at Newport. Her season of rest was again invaded
by severe illness among her children. Under date of August 3d, she
writes to Mrs. Smith:

I can see that our landlady, who has good sense and experience, thinks
G. will not get well. Sometimes, in awful moments, I think so too; but
then I cheer up and get quite elated. Last night as I lay awake, too
weary to sleep, I heard a harsh, rasping sound like a large saw. I
thought some animal unknown to me must be making it, it was so regular
and frequent. But after a time I found it was a dying young soldier who
lives farther from this house than Miss H. does from our house in New
York. His fearful cough! Oh, this war! this war! I never hated and
revolted against it as I did then. I had heard some one say such a young
man lay dying of consumption in this street, but till then was too
absorbed wit