ingled gladness
and sorrow. While somebody is always rejoicing, somebody, too, is always
sick or dying, or else weeping. How often she goes with her husband from
the wedding to the funeral, or hurries with him from the funeral to the
wedding. And then, perhaps, in her own family circle the same process
is repeated. The year 1868 was marked for Mrs. Prentiss in an unusual
degree by the sorrowful experience. The latter part of May Mrs. Stearns,
then suffering from an exhausting disease, came to New York and spent
several weeks in hopes of finding some relief from change of scene. But
her case grew more alarming; she passed the summer at Cornwall on the
Hudson in great pain and feebleness, and was then carried home to lie
down on her dying bed.

_To Mrs. Stearns, Newport, July 7, 1868._

We had a dreadful time getting here; I did not sleep a wink; there
were 1,250 passengers on board, almost piled on each other, and such
screaming of babies it would be hard to equal. There are lots of people
here we know; ever so many stopped to speak to us after church. We are
in the midst of a perfect world of show and glitter. But how many empty
hearts drive up and down in this gay procession of wealth and fashion!

I shall think of you a good deal to-day, as setting forth on your
journey and reaching your new home. I do hope you will find it
refreshing to go up the river, and that your rooms will be pleasant and
airy. We shall be anxious to hear all about it.

It is a constant lesson to be with Mrs. McCurdy. I think she is a true
Christian in all her views of life and death. Her sweet patience,
cheerfulness and contentment are a continual reproof to me. Here she
is so lame that she can go nowhere--a lameness of over twenty
years--restricted to the plainest food, liable to die at any moment, yet
the very happiest, sunniest creature I ever saw. She says, with tears,
that God has been _too good_ to her and given her too much; that
she sometimes fears He does not love her because He gives her such
prosperity. I reminded her of the four lovely children she had lost.
"Yes," she says, "but how many lovely ones I have left!" She says that
the long hours she has to spend alone, on account of her physical
infirmities, are never lonely or sad; she sings hymns and thinks over to
herself all the pleasures she has enjoyed in the past, in her husband
and children and devoted servants. She goes up to bed singing, and I
hear her singing while she d