te
unfavorably. It seems as if body and soul, joints and marrow, were
rudely separating. Poor George is half-distracted with the weight of
the questions concerning Chicago, and I think almost anything would be
better than this crucifying suspense. But I try not to make a fuss. Mrs.
D---- can tell you that I have said to her many times, during the last
few years, that, according to the ordinary run of life, things would not
long remain with us as they were; they were too good to last.

I have read and re-read "Spiritual Dislodgments," and remember it well.
I certainly wish for such dislodgments in me and mine, if we need them.
George has got hold of a book of A.'s, which delights him, Letters of
William Von Humboldt. [6] I suppose you recommended it to her. You
_must_ make your plans to come here this summer; I don't seem fully to
have a thing till you've seen it.

_To Mrs. Humphrey, Dorset, Aug. 8, 1871._

It took you a good while to answer my last letter, and I have been
equally lazy about writing since yours strayed this way. Letter-writing
has always been a resource and a pastime to me; a refuge in head-achy
and rainy days, and a tiny way to give pleasure or do good, when other
paths were hedged up. But this summer I have left almost everybody in
the lurch, partly from being more or less unwell and out of spirits,
partly because the Chicago question, remaining unsettled, has been such
a damper that I hadn't much heart to speak either of it or of anything
else. We are perplexed beyond measure what to do; the thought of losing
_my minister_ and having him turn into a professor, agonizes me; on the
other hand, who knows but he needs the rest that change of labor and the
five months' vacation would give him? _His_ chief worry is the effect
the attending funerals all the time has already had on my health. One
day I part with and bury (in imagination!) now this friend, now that,
and this mournful work does not sharpen one's appetite or invigorate
one's frame. I don't know how we've stood the conflict; and it seems
rather selfish to allude to my part of it; but women live more in their
friendships than men do, and the thought of tearing up all our roots is
more painful to me than to my husband, and he will not lose what I must
lose in addition, and as I have said before, my minister, which is the
hardest part of it.

I want you to know what straits we are in, in the hope that you and
yours will be stirred up to pray tha