A few days later she writes to Mrs. Smith, then in Europe: 

On the sixth, a day of fearful heat, I went to Williamstown, where I found all the children as well as possible, but heard the news of the Portland fire which almost killed me.  All my father’s manuscripts are destroyed; we always meant to divide them among us and ought to have done it long ago.  I heard of any number of injudicious babies as taking the inopportune day succeeding the fire to enter on the scene of desolation; all born in tents.  I am sorry my children will never see my father’s church, nor the house where I was born; but private griefs are nothing when compared with a calamity that is so appalling and that must send many a heart homeless and aching to the grave.  I spent two weeks at Williamstown, when George came for me, and the weather cooling off, we had a comfortable journey here.  We are perfectly delighted with Dorset; the sweet seclusion is most soothing, and the house is very pleasant.  Mr. and Mrs. F. are intelligent, agreeable people, and do all they can to make us comfortable.  The mountains are so near that I hear the crows cawing in the trees.  We are making pretty things and pressing an unheard-of quantity of ferns.  We go to the woods regularly every morning and stay the whole forenoon.  In the afternoon we rest, read, write, etc.; sometimes we drive and always after tea George walks with me about two miles.  I hope the war is not impeding your movements.  I suppose you will call this a short letter, but I think it is as long as is good for you.  All my dear nine pounds gained at Newburgh have gone by the board. August 20th.—­I am sorry you had such hot weather in Paris, but hope it passed off as our heat did.  Dr. Hamlin’s two youngest daughters have been here, and came to see me; they are both interesting girls, and the elder of the two really brilliant.  They had never been here before, and were carried away with the beauties of their mother’s birthplace.  I wish you could see my room.  Every pretty thing grows here and has come to cheer and beautify it.  The woods are everywhere, and as for the views, oh my child!  However, I do not suppose anything short of Mt.  Blanc will suit you now.

In April, 1867, the parsonage on Thirty-fifth street was occupied.  It had been built more especially for her sake, and was furnished by the generosity of her friends.  Her joy in entering it was completed by a “house-warming,” at the close of which a passage of Scripture was read by Prof.  Smith, “All hail the power of Jesus’s name” sung, and then the blessing of Heaven invoked upon the new home by that holy man of God, Dr. Thomas H. Skinner.  Here she passed the next six years of her life.  Here she wrote the larger portion of “Stepping Heavenward.”  And here the cup of her domestic joy, and of joy in her God and Saviour often ran over.  Here, too, some of her dearest Christian friendships were formed and enjoyed.

The summer of 1867 was passed at Dorset.  In less than a month of it she wrote one of her best children’s books, Little Lou’s Sayings and Doings; and much of the remainder was spent in discussing with her husband the project of building a cottage of their own.  In a letter to her cousin, Miss Shipman, dated Sept. 21, she writes: