room another of the patients. Two such bright creatures I
never met at once, and we got a-going at such a rate that though I had
never seen either of them before, I stayed nearly three hours! I mean to
have another dose of them before long, and give them another dose of E.
P. I have been reading a book called "The Presence of Christ" [9]--which
I liked so well that I got a copy to lend. It is not a great book, but I
think it will be a useful one. It says we are all idolaters, and reminds
me of my besetting sins in that direction. I feel overwhelmed when
I think how many young people are looking to me for light and help,
knowing how much I need both myself.... Every now and then some
Providential event occurs that wakes us up, and we find that we have
been asleep and dreaming, and that what we have been doing that made us
fancy ourselves awake, was mechanical.

I must be off now to my sewing society, which is a great farce, since
I can earn thirty or forty times as much with my pen as I can with my
needle, and if they would let me stay at home and write, I would give
them the results of my morning's work. But the minute I stop going
everybody else stops.

_To Mrs. Condict, April 7, 1872._

How I should love to spend this evening with you! This has been our
Communion Sunday, and I am sure the service would have been very
soothing to your poor, sore heart. And yet why do I say _poor_ when I
know it is _rich_? Oh, you might have the same sorrow without faith and
patience with which to bear it, and think how dreadful that would be!
Your little lamb has been spending his first Sunday with the Good
Shepherd and other lambs of the flock, and has been as happy as the
day is long. Perhaps your two children and mine are claiming kinship
together. If they met in a foreign land they would surely claim it for
our sakes; why not in the land that is not foreign, and not far off? But
still these are not the thoughts to bring you special comfort. "Thy will
be done!" does the whole. And yet my heart aches for you. Some one, who
had never had a real sorrow, told Mrs. N. that if she submitted to God's
will as she ought, she would cease to suffer. What a fallacy this is!
Mrs. N. was comforted by hearing that your little one was taken away by
the consequences of the fever, as her Nettie was, for she had reproached
herself with having neglected her to see to Johnny, who died first, and
thought this neglect had allowed her to take cold. I fee