To Miss Morse, Dorset, Oct. 7, 1872.

I sent home my servants a month ago, and they have been getting the parsonage to rights, while I have in their places two dear old souls who came to live with me twenty years ago.  One stayed ten years and then got married, the other I parted with when my children died because I did not need her.  It has been a green spot in the summer to have these affectionate, devoted creatures in the house.  We have had only one slight frost, but the woods have been gradually changing, and are in spots very beautiful.  We (you know what that word means) have been off gathering bright leaves for ourselves and the servants, who care for pretty things just as we do.  Yet not a flower has gone; we have had a host of verbenas and gladioli, some Japanese lilies, and so on, and have been able to give some pleasure to those who have not time to cultivate them for themselves.  It has been a dreadful season for sickness here, and flowers have been wanted in many a sick-room, and at some funerals.

Since I wrote you last “we” have been to Williamstown.  I wanted to get possession of my sister’s private papers.  Everything passed off nicely; I burned a large amount and brought away a trunk full, a part of which I have been reading with deep interest.  Her journals date back to the age of fifteen, though to read the early ones you would never dream of her being less than twenty or thirty.  She was a wonderful woman, and as I found such ample material for a memorial of her life, I felt half tempted to carry out her husband’s wishes and complete one.  But on the whole I do not think I shall.  You can imagine how my soul has been stirred by the whole thing; the farewell to the familiar objects of my childhood, the sense of a new race taking possession of her conservatory, her shells, her minerals, her pictures, her German, French, Italian, Spanish, Latin, Hebrew and Greek library—­dear me! but I need not enlarge on it to you.  And how stupid it is not to forget it all alongside of her ten years in heaven!

[1] “Especially after a time of some special seasons of grace, and some special new supplies of grace, received in such seasons, (as after the holy sacrament), then will he set on most eagerly, when he knows of the richest booty.  The pirates that let the ships pass as they go by empty, watch them well, when they return richly laden; so doth this great Pirate.”—­Archbishop Leighton, on I Peter, v. 8.

[2] “Cynegvius, a valiant Athenian, being in a great sea-fight against the Medes, espying a ship of the enemy’s well manned, and fitted for service, when no other means would serve, he grasped it with his hands to maintain the fight; and when his right hand was cut off, he held close with his left; but both hands being taken off, he held it fast with his teeth.”

[3] The following lines found on one of its blank pages were written perhaps at this time: 

  Precious companion! rendered dear
  By trial-hours of many a year,
  I love thee with a tenderness
  Which words have never yet defined.