I feel miserably I just put on my bonnet and get into an omnibus and go rattlety-bang down town; the air and the shaking and the jolting and the sight-seeing make me feel better and so I get along.  If I could safely leave my children I should go with George.  He hates to go alone and surely I hate to be left alone; in fact instead of liking each other’s society less and less, we every day get more and more dependent on each other, and take separation harder and harder.  Our children are well.

To her husband, who had gone to visit an old friend, at Harpswell, on the coast of Maine, she writes a few days later: 

On Saturday very early Professor Smith called with the House of Seven Gables.  I read about half of it in the evening.  One sees the hand of the artist as clearly in such a work as in painting, and the hand of a skilful one, too.  I have read many books with more interest, but never one in which I was so diverted from the story to a study of the author himself.  So far there is nothing exciting in it.  I don’t know who supplied the pulpit on Sunday morning.  The sermon was to young men, which was not so appropriate as it might have been, considering there were no young men present, unless I except our Eddy and other sprigs of humanity of his age.  I suppose you will wonder what in the world I let Eddy go for.  Well, I took a fancy to let Margaret try him, as nobody would know him in the gallery and he coaxed so prettily to go.  He was highly excited at the permission, and as I was putting on his sacque, I directed Margaret to take it off if he fell asleep.  “Ho!  I shan’t go to sleep,” quoth he; “Christ doesn’t have rocking-chairs in His house.”  He set off in high spirits, and during the long prayer I heard him laugh loud; soon after I heard a rattling as of a parasol and Eddy saying, “There it is!” by which time Margaret, finding he was going to begin a regular frolic, sagely took him out.

August 7th—­The five girls from Brooklyn all spent yesterday here.  They had a regular frolic towards night, bathing and shower-bathing.  Afterwards we all went on top of the house.  It was very pleasant up there.  I took the children to Barnum’s Museum, as I proposed doing.  They were delighted, particularly with the “Happy Family,” which consisted of cats, rats, birds, dogs, rabbits, monkeys, etc., etc., dwelling together in unity.  I observed that though the cats forbore to lay a paw upon the rats and mice about them, they yet took a melancholy pleasure in looking at these dainty morsels, from which nothing could persuade them to turn off their eyes.  I am glad that you got away from New Bedford alive and that you did not stay longer, but hearing about our friends there made me quite long to see them myself.  Do have just the best time in the world at Harpswell, and don’t let the Rev. Elijah drown you for the sake of catching your mantle as you go down.  I dare not tell you how much I miss you, lest you should think I do not rejoice in your having this vacation.  May God bless and keep you.