oming back I ordered some ice-cream, which built
us all up amazingly. The children are now counting the minutes till
five. One of the boys is perched on a wash-stand with his feet dangling
down through the hole where the bowl should be; the other is eating
crackers; the landlord is anxious I should take a glass of wine; and M.
is everywhere at once, having nearly worn out my watch-pocket to see
what time it was.

_Monday, June 21st._--It is now going on a fortnight since we left home.
Oh, if it were God's will, how I should love to get well, pay you back
some of the debts I owe you, be a better mother to my children, write
some more books, and make you love me so you wouldn't know what to do
with yourself! Just to see how it would seem to be well, and to show
you what a splendid creature I could be, if once out of the harness! A
modest little list you will say!... I said to myself, Is it after all
such a curse to suffer and to be a source of suffering to others? Isn't
it worth while to pay something for warm human sympathies and something
for rich experience of God's love and wisdom? And I felt, that for you
to have a radiant, cheerful, health-happy wife was not, perhaps, so good
for you, as a minister of Christ's gospel, as to have the poor feeble
creature whose infirmities keep you anxious and off the top of the wave.

Saturday afternoon the Professor took me off strawberrying again. Can
you believe that till this June I never went strawberrying in my life?
I don't eat them, so the fun is in the picking. Do you realise how kind
the Professor is to me? I am afraid I don't. He works very hard, too
hard, I think; but perhaps he does it as a refuge from his loneliness.
His heart seems still full of tenderness toward Louisa. Yesterday he
took me aside and told me, with much emotion, that he dreamed the night
before that she floated towards him with a leaf in her hand, on which
she wrote the words "Sabbath peacefulness." I love him much, but am
afraid of him, as I am of all men--even of you; you need not laugh, I
am.

To Mrs. Smith she writes from Rockaway, July 24th:

We were glad to hear that you were safely settled at Prout's Neck, far
from riots, if not from rumors thereof. We have as convenient and roomy
and closetty a cottage as possible. We are within three minutes or so
of the beach, and go back and forth, bathe, dig sand, and stare at the
ocean according to our various ages and tastes. I really do not know how