In ways various,
  Or, might I say, contrarious—­

He was training her for it during these years of bodily infirmity and suffering.

The summer of 1861 was passed at Newport.  In a letter to Mrs. Smith, dated July 28th, she writes: 

We find the Cliff House delightful, within a few minutes’ walk of the sea, which we have in full view from one of our windows.  And we have no lack of society, for the Bancrofts, Miss Aspinwall and her sister, as well as the Skinners, are very friendly.  But I am so careworn and out of sorts, that this beautiful ocean gives me little comfort.  I seem to be all the time toting one child or another about, or giving somebody paregoric or rhubarb, or putting somebody to sleep, or scolding somebody for waking up papa, who is miserable, and his oration untouched.  There, don’t mind me; it’s at the end of a churchless Sunday, and I dare say I am “only peevis’,” as the little boy said.

But in a few weeks the children were well again and her own health so much improved, that she was able to indulge in surf-bathing, which she “enjoyed tremendously,” and early in the fall the whole family returned to town greatly refreshed by the summer’s rest.

On the 24th of January, 1862, her sister, Mrs. Hopkins, died.  This event touched her deeply.  She hurried off to Williamstown, whence she wrote to her husband, who was unable to accompany her: 

If you had known that I should not get here till half-past nine last night, and that in an open sleigh from North Adams, you would not have let me come.  But so far I am none the worse for it; and, when I came in and found the Professor and T. and Eddy sitting here all alone and so forlorn in their unaccustomed leisure, I could not be thankful enough that a kind Providence had allowed me to come.  It is a very great gratification to them all, especially to the Professor, and even more so than I had anticipated.  In view of the danger of being blocked up by another snow-storm, I shall probably think it best to return by another route, which they all say is the best.  I hope you and my precious children keep well.

No picture of Mrs. Prentiss’ life would be complete, in which her sister’s influence was not distinctly visible.  To this influence she owed the best part of her earlier intellectual training; and it did much to mould her whole character.  Mrs. Hopkins was one of the most learned, as well as most gifted, women of her day; and had not ill-health early disabled her for literary labors, she might, perhaps, have won for herself an enduring name in the literature of the country.  There were striking points of resemblance between her and Sara Coleridge; the same early intellectual bloom; the same rare union of feminine delicacy and sensibility with masculine strength and breadth of understanding; the same taste for the beautiful in poetry, in art, and in nature, joined to similar fondness for metaphysical studies; the same delight in books