I was so nearly frantic, my dear Fanny, from want of sleep, that I could not feel anything.  I was perfectly stupid, and all the way home from East Dorset hardly spoke a word to my dear John, nor did he to me. [7] The next day he said such lovely things to me that I hardly knew whether I was in the body or out of it, and then came your letter, as if to make my cup run over.  I longed for you last night, and it is lucky for your frail body that can bear so little, that you were not in your little room at Mrs. G.’s; but not at all lucky for your heart and soul.  I hope God will bless us to each other.  It is not enough that we find in our mutual affection something cheering and comforting.  It must make us more perfectly His.  What a wonderful thing it is that coming here entire strangers to each other, we part as if we had known each other half a century!

I am not afraid that we shall get tired of each other.  The great point of union is that we have gone to our Saviour, hand in hand, on the supreme errand of life, and have not come away empty.  All my meditations bring me back to that point; or, I should rather say, to Him.  I came here praying that in some way I might do something for Him.  The summer has gone, and I am grieved that I have not been, from its beginning to its end, so like Him, so full of Him, as to constrain everybody I met to love Him too.  Isn’t there such power in a holy life, and have not some lived such a life?  I hardly know whether to rejoice most in my love for Him, or to mourn over my meagre love; so I do both.

When I think that I have a new friend, who will be indulgent to my imperfections, and is determined to find something in me to love, I am glad and thankful.  But when, added to that, I know she will pray for me, and so help my poor soul heavenward, it does seem as if God had been too good to me.  You can do it lying down or sitting up, or when you are among other friends.  It is true, as you say, that I do not think much of “lying-down prayer” in my own case, but I have not a weak back and do not need such an attitude.  And the praying we do by the wayside, in cars and steamboats, in streets and in crowds, perhaps keeps us more near to Christ than long prayers in solitude could without the help of these little messengers, that hardly ever stop running to Him and coming back with the grace every moment needs.  You can put me into some of these silent petitions when you are too tired to pray for me otherwise.

I have been writing this in my shawl and bonnet, expecting every instant to hear the bell toll for church, and now it is time to go.  Good-bye, dear, till by and by.