Yesterday we went down to New York to hear Jenny Lind; a pleasure to remember for the rest of one’s life.  If anything, she surpassed our expectations.  In coming home a slight accident to the cars obliged us to walk about a mile, and I must needs fall into a hole in the bridge which we were crossing, and bruise and scrape one knee quite badly.  The wonder is that I did not go into the river, as it was a large hole, and pitch dark.  I think if I had been walking with Mr. Prentiss I should not only have gone in myself, but pulled him in too; but I had the arm of a stronger man, who held me up till I could extricate myself.  You can’t think how I miss you, nor how often I wish you could run in and sit with me, as you used to do.  I have always loved you, and shall remember you and yours with the utmost interest.  We had a pleasant call the other day from Captain Gibbs.  Seeing him made me homesick enough.  I could hardly keep from crying all the time he stayed.  It seems to us both as if we had been gone from New Bedford more months than we have days.  Mr. Prentiss said yesterday that he should expect if he went back directly, to see the boys and girls grown up and married.

To Mrs. Reuben Nye, Newark, Feb 12, 1851.

Mr. Prentiss and Mr. Poor have just taken Annie and Eddy out to walk, and I have been moping over the fire and thinking of New Bedford friends, and wishing one or more would “happen in.”  I am just now getting over a severe attack of rheumatism, which on leaving my back intrenched itself in Mr. P.’s shoulder.  I dislike this climate and am very suspicious of it.  Everybody has a horrible cold, or the rheumatism, or fever and ague.  Mr. Prentiss says if I get the latter, he shall be off for New England in a twinkling.  I think he is as well as can be expected while the death of his brother continues so fresh in his remembrance.  All the old cheerfulness, which used to sustain me amid sickness and trouble, has gone from him.  But God has ordered the iron to enter his soul, and it is not for me to resist that will.  Our children are well.  We have had much comfort in them both this winter.  Mother Prentiss is renewing her youth, it is so pleasant to her to have us all near her. (Eddy and A. are hovering about me, making such a noise that I can hardly write.  Eddy says, “When I was tired, Poor tarried me.”) Mr. Poor carries all before him. [13] He is very popular throughout the city, and I believe Mrs. P. is much admired by their people.  Mr. Prentiss is preaching every Sabbath evening, as Dr. Condit is able to preach every morning now.  I feel as much at home as I possibly could anywhere in the same time, but instead of mourning less for my New Bedford friends, I mourn more and more every day.

To Mrs. Allen she writes, Feb. 21: 

I know all about those depressed moods, when it costs one as much to smile, or to give a pleasant answer, as it would at other times to make a world.  What a change it will be to us poor sickly, feeble, discouraged ones, when we find ourselves where there is neither pain or lassitude or fatigue of the body, or sorrow or care or despondency of the mind!