Monday.—­Papa preached delightfully yesterday.  Mr. B. took a pew and Mr. I don’t know who took another.  Your letter came this morning and was full of interesting things.  I hope Mrs. S. will send me her own and Jean Ingelow’s verses.  What fun to get into a correspondence with her!  I have had an interesting time to-day.  Dr. Skinner lent me some months ago a little book called “God’s Furnace”; I didn’t like it at first, but read it through several times and liked it better and better each time.  And to-day Mrs. ——­ brought the author to spend a few hours (she lives out of town), and we three black-eyed women had a remarkable time together.  There is certainly such a thing as a heaven below, only it doesn’t last as the real heaven will.  We had Mr. C. to tea last night; after tea he read us three poems of his wife, and papa was weak enough to go and read him some verses of mine, which he ought not to have done till I am dead and gone.  Then he played and sang with the children, and we had prayers, and I read scraps to him and papa from Faber’s “All for Jesus” and Craig’s Memoir.  M. is lying on the sofa studying, papa is in his study, the boys are hazing about; it snows a little and melts as it falls, and so, with love to all, both great and small, I am your loving “ELDERLY LADY WITH GREY PUFFS.”

February 8th, 1870.—­We are having a tremendous snow-storm for a wonder.  I started out this morning with G., and when we got to the Fifth avenue clock he found he should be late unless he ran, and I was glad to let him go and turn back to meet M., who had heavy books besides her umbrella.  The wind blew furiously, my umbrella broke and flew off in a tangent, and when I got it, it turned wrong side out and I came near ascending as in a balloon; M. soon came in sight and I convoyed her safely to school.  Mrs. ——­ told a friend of ours that Mr. and Mrs. Prentiss really enjoyed Mrs. C——­’s death, and they seemed destitute of natural affection; and that as for Mrs. P. it was plain she had never suffered in any way.  Considering the tears we both shed over Mrs. C., and some other little items in our past history, we must set Mrs. ——­ down as wiser than the ancients.

Sunday Evening.—­Yesterday Lizzy B. came to say that her mother was “in a gully” and wanted me to come and pull her out.  I went and found her greatly depressed, and felt sure it was all physical, and not a case for special spiritual pulling.  So I coaxed her, laughed at her, and cheered her all I could.  She said she had been “a solemn pig” for a week, in allusion to some pictures Dr. P. had drawn for her and for me illustrating the solemn pig and the jolly pig.  Mr. Randolph has sent up a letter from a man in Nice whose wife wants to translate Katy into French.  I sent word they might translate it into Hottentot for all me.  Good-night, my dear, I am sound asleep.

Your affectionate Mother PRENTISS.