best before we
go away. But this wish must yield to fate, like many another; and, as I
have come to the end of my paper, I will love and leave you.

* * * * *

IV.

_The Story Lizzie Told._ Country and City. The Law of Christian
Progress. Letters to a Friend bereft of three Children. Sudden Death of
another Friend. "Go on; step faster." Fenelon and his Influence upon her
religious Life. Lines on her Indebtedness to him.

_The Story Lizzie Told_ was published about this time. It had already
appeared in the Riverside Magazine. The occasion of the story was a
passage in a letter from London written by a friend, which described in
a very graphic and touching way the yearly exhibition of the Society for
the Promotion of Window Gardening among the Poor. The exhibition was
held at the "Dean's close" at Westminster and the Earl of Shaftesbury
gave the prizes. [9]

No one of Mrs. Prentiss's smaller works, perhaps, has been so much
admired as _The Story Lizzie Told_. It was written at Dorset in the
course of a single day, if not at a single sitting; and so real was
the scene to her imagination that, on reading it in the evening to
her husband, she had to stop again and again from the violence of her
emotion. "What a little fool I am!" she would say, after a fresh burst
of tears. [10]

_To Mrs. Leonard, New York, Oct. 16, 1870._

Your letter came in the midst of the wear and tear of A.'s return to us.
We were kept in suspense about her from Monday, when she was due, till,
Friday when she came, and it is years since I have got so excited and
wrought up. They had a dreadful passage, but she was not sick at all.
Prof. Smith is looking better than I ever saw him, and we are all most
happy in being together once more. I can truly re-echo your wish that
you lived half way between us and Dorset, for then we should see you
once a year at least. I miss you and long to see you. How true it is
that each friend has a place of his own that no one else can fill! I do
not doubt that the 13th of October was a silvery wedding-day to your
dear husband. His loss has made Christ dearer to you, and so has made
your union more perfect. I suppose you were never so much one as you are
now.

We have had a delightful summer, not really suffering from the heat;
though, of course, we felt it more or less. All our nights were cool....
I can not tell you how Mr. P. and myself enjoy our country home. It
seems as if w