exhibited in her writings.  She published somewhere an account of one of our inspired or rhapsodical evenings, but greatly to my regret failed to include in it her own contribution which was the best of all.  I distinctly remember the time and scene—­the September evening—­the big, square sitting-room of the old Seminary building in which you boarded—­the bright faces whose radiance made up in part for the limitations of artificial light—­the puzzled air which every one took on when presented with the list of unmanageable words, to be reproduced in their consecutive order in prose or verse composition within the next quarter or half hour—­the stillness which supervened while the enforced “pleasures” of “poetic pains” or prose agony were being undergone—­the sense of relief which supplemented the completion of the batch of extempore effusions—­and the fun which their reading provoked.  Mrs. Prentiss had contrived out of the odd and incoherent jumble of words a choice bit of poetic humor and pathos, which I never quite forgave her for omitting in the publication of the nonsense written by other hands.  These trifles as they seemed at the time, and as in fact they were, become less insignificant in the retrospect, as we associate them with the whole character and being we instinctively love to place at the farthest remove from gloom or sadness, and as they rediscover to us in the distance the native vivacity and grace of which they were the chance expression.  Since that summer of 1865, having lived away from New York, I saw little of Mrs. Prentiss, but I have a special remembrance of one little visit you made at our home in Yonkers which she seemed very much to enjoy—­saying of the reunion which made it so pleasant to the members of our family and all who happened to be together at the time, that it was “like heaven.” [13]

During the summer of 1865 the sympathies of Mrs. Prentiss were much wrought upon by the sickness and death of her husband’s mother, who entered into rest on the 9th of August, in the eighty-fourth year of her age.  On the 12th of the previous January, she with the whole family had gone to Newark to celebrate the eighty-third birthday of this aged saint.  Had they known it was to be the last, they could have wished nothing changed.  It was a perfect winter’s day, and the scene in the old parsonage was perfect too.  There, surrounded by children and children’s children, sat the venerable grandmother with a benignant smile upon her face and the peace of God in her heart.  As she received in birthday gifts and kisses and congratulations their loving homage, the measure of her joy was full, and she seemed ready to say her Nunc dimittis.  She belonged to the number of those holy women of the old time who trusted in God and adorned themselves with the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, and whose children to the latest generation rise up and call them blessed.