for baby, and proposing that the doctor should send a small piece for her every day!  Thank you, darling, for your proposal about the Ocean House.  I trust no such change will be needful.  We are all comfortable now, the weather is delicious, and there are so many pretty walks about here, that I am only afraid I shall be too well off.  Everything about the country is charming to me, and I never get tired of it.  The first few days nurse seemed a good deal out of sorts; but I must expect some such little vexations; of course, I can not have perfection, and for dear baby’s sake I shall try to exercise all the prudence and forbearance I can.

Sunday.—­We went to church this morning and heard a most instructive and, I thought, superior sermon from Mr. Burr of Weston, on progress in religious knowledge.  He used the very illustration about the cavern and the point of light that you did.

July 7th.—­We all drove to the beach on Saturday.  It was just the very day for such a trip, and baby was enchanted.  She sat right down and began to gather stones and shells, as if she had the week before her.  We were gone three hours and came home by way of the village, quite in the mood for supper.  Yesterday we had a pleasant service; Mr. Atkinson appears to be a truly devout, heavenly man to whom I felt my heart knit at the outset on this account, I am taking great delight in reading the Memoir of Miss Allibone. [8] How I wish I had a friend of so heavenly a temper!  I fear my new Little Susy will come out at the little end of the horn.  I am sure it won’t be so good as the others.  It is more than one quarter done.

July 21st.—­What do you think I did this forenoon?  Why, I finished Little Susy and shall lay it aside for some days, when I shall read it over, correct, and pack it off out of the way.  Yes, I wish you would bring my German Hymn Book.  I am so glad you liked the hymns I had marked! [9] And do get well so as not to have to leave off preaching the Gospel.  My heart dies within me whenever I think of your leaving the ministry.  Every day I live, it appears to me that the office of a Christian pastor and teacher is the best in the world.  I shall not be able to write you a word to-morrow, as we are to go to Greenfield Hill to Miss Murray’s, and you must take to-morrow’s love to-night—­if you think you can stand so much at once.  God be with you and bless you.

July 30th.—­Baby and I have just been having a great frolic.  She was so pleased with your message that she caught up your letter and kissed it, which I think very remarkable in a child who, I am sure, never saw such a thing done.  A. seems well and happy, and is as good as I think we ought to expect.  I see more and more every day, that if there ever was such a thing as human perfection, it was as long ago as David’s time when, as he says, he saw the “end” of it.  How very kind the W.’s have been!

August 3d.—­I got hold of Dr. Boardman’s “Bible in the Family,” at the Bucks yesterday, and brought it home to read.  I like it very much.  There is a vein of humor running through it which, subdued as it is, must have awakened a good many smiles.  He quotes some lines of Coleridge, which I wonder I did not have as a motto for Susy’s Teachers: