The children are all bright and well.  The first time we took the cars after landing, M. was greatly delighted.  “Now we’re going to see grandma,” she cried.  Mrs. Buck got up a picnic for her, and had a treat of raspberries and sponge-cake—­frosted.  The cake had “M.” on the top in red letters.  Baby is full of life and mischief.  The day we landed he said “Papa,” and now he says “Mamma.”  Isabella [1] is everything we could ask.  She is trying to learn French, and A. hears her recite every night.  George found some furnished rooms at Montreux, which he has taken for six months from October, and we shall thus be keeping house.  A. has just rushed in and snatched her French Bible, as she is going to the evening service with some of the English family.  You will soon hear all about us from Mr. Stearns.

The following letter will show how little power either her own cares, or the charms of nature around her, had to quench her sympathy for friends in sorrow: 

To Miss A. H. Woolsey, Chateau D’Oex, Sept. 11, 1858.

We received your kind letter this morning.  We had already had our sympathies excited in behalf of you all, by seeing a notice of the death of the dear little child in a paper lent to us by Mrs. Buck, and were most anxious to hear all the particulars you have been so good as to give us.  This day, which fifteen years ago we marked with a white stone, and which we were to celebrate with all our hearts, has passed quite wearily and drearily.  There is something indescribably sad in the details of the first bereavement which has fallen within the circle of those we love; perhaps, too, old sorrows of our own clamored for a hearing; and then, too, there was the conviction, “This is not all death will do while the ocean severs you from kindred and friends.”  We longed to speak to you many words of affectionate sympathy and Christian cheer; but long before we can make them reach you, I trust you will have felt sure that you were at least remembered and prayed for.  It is a comfort that no ocean separates us from Him who has afflicted you.  The loss to you each and all is very great, but to the mother of such a child it is beyond description.  Faith alone can bear her through it, but faith can.  What a wonderful little creature the sweet Ellie must have been!  We were greatly touched by your account of her singing that beautiful hymn.  It must have been divinely ordered that she should leave such a precious legacy behind her.  And though her loveliness makes her loss the greater, the loss of an unlovely wayward child would surely be a heavier grief.