I miss you more and more.  People here are kind and excellent and friendly, but I can not make them, as yet, fill the places of the familiar faces I have left in New Bedford.  I am all the time walking through our neighborhood, dropping into Deacon Barker’s or your house, or welcoming some of you into our old house on the corner.  Eddy is pretty well.  He is a sweet little boy, gentle and docile.  He learns to talk very fast, and is crazy to learn hymns.  He says, “Tinkle, tinkle leetleeverybody, and give ’tatoes to beggar boys.”  Mother Prentiss seems to thrive on having us all about her.  She lives so far off that I see her seldom, but Mr. P. goes every day, except Sundays, when he can’t go—­rain or shine, tired or not tired, convenient or not convenient.  Since my mother’s death he has felt that he must do quickly whatever he has to do for his own.

[1] “I found dear Abby still alive and rejoiced beyond expression to see me.  She had had a very feeble night, but brightened up towards noon and when I arrived seemed entirely like her old self, smiling sweetly and exclaiming, “This is the last blessing I desired!  Oh, how good the Lord is, isn’t He?” It was very delightful.  The doctor has just been in and he says she may go any instant, and yet may live a day or two.  Mother is wonderfully calm and happy, and the house seems like the very gate of heaven....  I so wish you could have seen Abby’s smile when I entered her room.  And then she inquired so affectionately for you and baby:  “Now tell me everything about them.”  She longs and prays to be gone.  There is something perfectly childlike about her expressions and feelings, especially toward mother.  She can’t bear to have her leave the room and holds her hand a good deal of the time.  She sends ever so much love.”—­ Extract from a letter, dated Portland, January 27, 1847.

[2] The late Rev. William T. Dwight, D.D., pastor of the Third Church in Portland.  He was a son of President Dwight, an accomplished man, a noble Christian citizen, and one of the ablest preachers of his day.  For many years his house almost adjoined Mrs. Payson’s, and both he and Mrs. Dwight were among her most cherished friends.

[3] A devoted friend of her father’s, one of his deacons, and a genial, warm-hearted, good man.

[4] A niece of her husband, a lovely child, who died a few years later in Georgia.

[5] Rev. James Lewis, a venerated elder and local preacher of the Methodist Episcopal Church, then nearly eighty years of age.  He died in 1855, universally beloved and lamented.  He entered upon his work in 1800.  During most of those fifty-five years he was wont to preach every Sabbath, often three times, rarely losing an appointment by sickness, and still more rarely by storms in summer or winter.  He lived in Gorham, Maine, and his labors were pretty equally divided among all the towns within fifteen miles round.  His rides out and back, often over