A notable incident of this year was the entering upon housekeeping at Dorset under her own roof.  As is usual in such cases, the process was somewhat wearisome and trying, but the result was most happy.  All the bright anticipations, with which the event had been so long looked forward to, were more than realised.  For the next ten summers the Dorset home was to her a sweet haven of rest from the agitations, cares, and turmoil of New York life.  It seemed at the time a venturesome, almost a rash thing, to build it; but when she left it for her home above, the building of the house seemed to have been an inspiration of Providence.  While contributing greatly to her happiness, it probably added several years to her life.  The four months which she passed each season at Dorset were spent largely in the open air, and in such varied and pleasant exercise as exerted the most healthful, soothing influence upon both body and soul.  It was just this fruit her husband hoped might, by the blessing of Heaven, blossom out of the new home, and in later years he used often to say to her, that if the place should be of a sudden annihilated, he should still feel that it had paid for itself many times over.

To Mrs. Smith, Dorset, July 19, 1869.

How many times during the last month I have been reminded of your saying you had lived through the agony of getting your house ready to rent.  I can sum up all I have been through by saying that almost everything has turned out the reverse of what I expected.  In the first place, I broke down just as we were to start to come here, and had to be left behind to pick up life enough to undertake the journey; then the car we chartered did not get here for a week, and nobody but A. had anything to wear, and all my flowers died for want of water.  The car, too, was broken into and my idols of tin pans all taken, with some other things, and when it did arrive it was unpacked, and our goods brought here, in a regular deluge, the like of which has not been seen since the days of Noah.  For days everything was in dire confusion; but for all that our own home was delightful, and we had the most outrageous appetites you ever heard of.  George is in ecstasies with his house, his land, his pig, and his horse....  I hope you are not sick and tired of all this rigmarole; it isn’t in human nature to move into a house of its own and talk of anything else.  I got a warm-hearted letter a few days ago from the city of Milwaukee, from an unknown western sister, beginning, “Whom not having seen I love,” and going on to say that Katy describes herself and her lot exactly, only she had no Martha on hand.  I get so many such testimonies.  I am going to spare your eyes and brains by winding up this epistle and going to bed.  I do not think your husband ought to come home till he has recovered his power of sleeping.  I know how to pity him, if anybody does, and I know how loss of sleep cripples.  Good-night, dear child.