us and our little ones we will
treasure among our most precious blessings." He invites her to renew
the relations another year, and so she did.

To avoid the rigors of a New England climate, Miss Dix, for some
years, spent her winters, now in Philadelphia, now in Alexandria, Va.,
keeping herself busy with reading "of a very multifarious
kind,--poetry, science, biography, and travels,--besides eking out the
scanty means she had laid by from her teaching by writing stories and
compiling floral albums and books of devotion." In 1827, she published
a volume of "Ten Short Stories for Children" which went to a second
edition in 1832; in 1828, "Meditations for Private Hours," which went
through several editions; in 1829, two little books, "The Garland of
Flora," and "The Pearl, a Christmas Gift." Occasional brief
engagements in teaching are also recorded in this period.

The winter of 1830, she spent with the Channings on the Island of St.
Croix, in the West Indies, in her old capacity as governess. A
daughter of Dr. Channing gives an interesting account of the
preceptress of whom, first and last, she had seen so much. She
describes Miss Dix as tall and dignified, very shy in manner, strict
and inflexible in discipline. "From her iron will, it was hopeless to
appeal. I think she was a very accomplished teacher, active and
diligent herself, very fond of natural history and botany. She enjoyed
long rambles, always calling our attention to what was interesting in
the world around us. I hear that some of her pupils speak of her as
irascible. I have no such remembrance. Fixed as fate we considered
her."

Miss Dix returned from the West Indies in the spring, very much
improved in health, and in the autumn, she reopened her school in the
Dix Mansion, with the same high ideals as before and with such
improved methods as experience had suggested. Pupils came to her again
as of old and she soon had as many attendants as her space permitted.
A feature of the school was a letter-box through which passed a daily
mail between teacher and pupils and "large bundles of child-letters of
this period" are still extant, preserved by Miss Dix with scrupulous
care to the end of life. It was a bright child who wrote as follows:
"I thought I was doing well until I read your letter, but when you
said that you were rousing to greater energy, all my satisfaction
vanished. For if you are not satisfied in some measure with yourself
and are going to do