How ignorant we often are, at the time, of the turning-points in our life!  We inquire for a summer boarding-place and decide upon it without any thought beyond the few weeks for which it was engaged; and yet, perhaps, our whole earthly future or that of those most dear to us, is to be vitally affected by this seemingly trifling decision.  So it happened to Mrs. Prentiss in 1866.  Early in May her husband and his brother-in-law, Dr. Stearns, went, at a venture, to Dorset, Vt., and there secured rooms for their families during the summer.  But little did either she, or they, dream that Dorset was to be henceforth her summer home and her resting-place in death! [1]

The Portland fire, to which reference is made in the following letters, occurred on the 4th of July, and consumed a large portion of the city.

To Miss Mary B. Shipman, Dorset, July 25, 1866.

Never in my life did I live through such a spring and early summer as this!  As to business and bustle, I mean.  You must have given me up as a lost case!  But I have thought of you every day and longed to hear how you were getting on, and whether you lived through that dreadful weather.  Annie went with the children to Williamstown about the middle of June; I nearly killed myself with getting them ready to go and could see the flesh drop off my bones.  George and I went to Newport on what Mrs. Bronson called our “bridal trip,” and stayed eleven days.  Mr. and Mrs. McCurdy were kindness personified.  We came home and preached on the first Sunday in July, and then went to Greenfield Hill to spend the Fourth with Mrs. Bronson. [2] That nearly finished me, and then I went to Williamstown on that hot Friday and was quite finished on reaching there, to hear about the fire in Portland.  Did you ever hear of anything so dreadful?  I did not know for several days but H. and C. were burnt out of house and home; most of my other friends I knew were, and can there be any calamity like being left naked, hungry and homeless, everything gone forever....  But let no one say a word that has a roof over his head.  All my father’s sermons were burned, the house where most of us were born, his church, etc.  Fancy New Haven stripped of its shade-trees, and you can form some idea of the loss of Portland in that respect.  Well, I might go on talking forever, and not have said anything. [3] The heat upset G. and we have been fighting off sickness for a week, I getting wild with loss of sleep.  We are enchanted with Dorset.  We are so near the woods and mountains that we go every day and spend hours wandering about among them.  If there is any difference, I think this place even more beautiful than Williamstown; it suits us better as a summer retreat, from its great seclusion.  I am, that is we are, mean enough to want to keep it as quiet and secluded as it is now, by not letting people know how nice it is; a very few fashionably dressed people would just spoil it for us.  So keep our counsel, you dear child.