The Portland fire, to which reference is made in the following letters,
occurred on the 4th of July, and consumed a large portion of the city.

_To Miss Mary B. Shipman, Dorset, July 25, 1866._

Never in my life did I live through such a spring and early summer as
this! As to business and bustle, I mean. You must have given me up as a
lost case! But I have thought of you every day and longed to hear
how you were getting on, and whether you lived through that dreadful
weather. Annie went with the children to Williamstown about the middle
of June; I nearly killed myself with getting them ready to go and could
see the flesh drop off my bones. George and I went to Newport on what
Mrs. Bronson called our "bridal trip," and stayed eleven days. Mr. and
Mrs. McCurdy were kindness personified. We came home and preached on
the first Sunday in July, and then went to Greenfield Hill to spend the
Fourth with Mrs. Bronson. [2] That nearly finished me, and then I went
to Williamstown on that hot Friday and was quite finished on reaching
there, to hear about the fire in Portland. Did you ever hear of anything
so dreadful? I did not know for several days but H. and C. were burnt
out of house and home; most of my other friends I knew were, and can
there be any calamity like being left naked, hungry and homeless,
everything gone forever.... But let no one say a word that has a roof
over his head. All my father's sermons were burned, the house where
most of us were born, his church, etc. Fancy New Haven stripped of its
shade-trees, and you can form some idea of the loss of Portland in
that respect. Well, I might go on talking forever, and not have said
anything. [3] The heat upset G. and we have been fighting off sickness
for a week, I getting wild with loss of sleep. We are enchanted with
Dorset. We are so near the woods and mountains that we go every day and
spend hours wandering about among them. If there is any difference, I
think this place even more beautiful than Williamstown; it suits us
better as a summer retreat, from its great seclusion. I am, that is we
are, mean enough to want to keep it as quiet and secluded as it is
now, by not letting people know how nice it is; a very few fashionably
dressed people would just spoil it for us. So keep our counsel, you dear
child.

A few days later she writes to Mrs. Smith, then in Europe:

On the sixth, a day of fearful heat, I went to Williamstown, where I
found all the children as w