Do you really mean to say that Miss K. is going to pray for me?  How delightful!  I am greedy for prayer; nobody is rich enough to give me anything I so long for; indeed when my husband begged me to tell him what I wanted at Christmas, I couldn’t think of a thing; but oh, what unutterable longing I have for more of Christ.  Why should we not speak freely to each other of Him?  Don’t apologise for it again.  The wonder is that we have the heart to speak of anything else.  Sometimes I am almost frightened at the expressions of love I pour out upon Him, and wonder if I am really in earnest; if I really mean all I say.  Is it even so with you?  It is not foolish, is it?  Perhaps He likes to hear our poor stammerings, when we can not get our emotions and our thoughts into words.

To Miss E. A. Warner, New York, Jan. 7, 1870.

I find letters more and more unsatisfactory.  How little I know of your real life, how little you know of mine!  So much is going on all the time that I should run and tell you about if you lived here, but which it would take too long to write.  I have very precious Christian friends within six months, who take, or rather to whom I give, more time than I could or would spare for any ordinary friendship; one of them has spent four hours in my room with me at a time, and we had wonderful communings together.  Then two dear friends have died.  One of the two, of whom you have heard me speak, was the most useful woman in our church; my husband and I both wept over her death.  The other directed in dying that a copy of Stepping Heavenward should be given to each of her Sunday scholars; a lifelong fear of death was taken away, and she declared it pleasanter and easier to die than to live; her last words, five minutes before she drew her last gentle breath, came with the upward, dying look, “Wonderful love!”

You can’t think how sweet it is to be a pastor’s wife; to feel the right to sympathise with those who mourn, to fly to them at once, and join them in their prayers and tears.  It would be pleasant to spend one’s whole time among sufferers, and to keep testifying to them what Christ can and will become to them, if they will only let Him....  No, I never “Dialed” or was transcendental.  I don’t think knowledge will come to us by intuition in heaven, though knowledge enough to get started there, will.  But I don’t much care how it will be.  I know we shall learn Christ there.  I have read lately Prof.  Phelps on the Solitude of Christ; it is a suggestive little book which I like much.  Have you ever read the Life of Mrs. Hawkes?  It is interesting because she records so many of Cecil’s wonderful remarks—­such, e.g., as these:  “a humble, kind silence often utters much.”  “To-morrow you and I shall walk together in a garden, when I hope to talk with you about everything but sadness.”  I am going to ask a favor of you, though I hate to put you to the trouble.  In writing a telegram in great haste and sorrow, I accidentally used and cut into the lines you copied for me—­Sabbath hymn in sickness.  It was a real loss, and if you ever feel a little stronger than usual, will you make me another copy?  I so often want to comfort sick persons with it.