I feel much more like sitting down and weeping with you than attempting to utter words of consolation.  Nowhere out of her own home was Virginia more beloved and admired than in our family; we feel afflicted painfully at what to our human vision looks like an unmitigated calamity.  But if it is so hard for us to bear, to whom in no sense she belonged, what a heartrending event this is to you, her mother!  What an amazement, what a mystery.  But it will not do to look upon it on this side.  We must not associate anything so unnatural as death with a being so eminently formed for life.  We must look beyond, as soon as our tears will let us, to the sphere on which she has been honored to enter in her brilliant youth; to the society of the noblest and the best human beings earth has ever known; to the fulness of life, the perfection of every gift and grace, to congenial employment, to the welcome of Him who has conquered death and brought life and immortality to light.  If we think of her as in the grave, we must own that hers was a hard lot; but she is not in a grave; she is at home; she is well, she is happy, she will never know a bereavement, or a day’s illness, or the infirmities and trials of old age; she has got the secret of perpetual youth.

But while these thoughts assuage our grief, they can not wholly allay it.  We have no reason to doubt that she would have given and received happiness here upon earth, had she been spared; and we can not help missing her, mourning for her, longing for her, out of the very depths of our hearts.  The only real comfort is that God never makes mistakes; that He would not have snatched her from us, if He had not had a reason that would satisfy us if we knew it.  I can not tell you with what tender sympathy I think of your return to your desolate home; the agonizing meeting with your bereaved boys; the days and nights that have to be lived through, face to face with a great sorrow.  May God bless and keep you all.

To Mrs. Condict, Dorset, July 11, 1875.

I have been sitting at my window, enjoying the clear blue sky, and the “living green” of the fields and woods, and wishing you were here to share it all with me.  But as you are not, the next best thing is to write you.  You seem to have been wafted into that strange sea-side spot, to do work there, and I hope you will have health and strength for it.  One of the signs of the times is the way in which the hand of Providence scatters “city folks” all about in waste places, there to sow seed that in His own time shall spring up and bear fruit for Him.  I was shocked at what you said about Miss ——­ not recognising you.  It seemed almost incredible.  Mr. Prentiss has persuaded me to have a family Bible-reading on Sunday afternoon, as we have no service, and studying up for it this morning I came to this proverb which originated with Huss, whose name in Bohemian signifies goose.  He said at the stake:  “If you burn a goose a swan will rise from its ashes”; and I thought—­Well, Miss ——­’s usefulness is at an end, but God can, and no doubt will, raise up a swan in her place.  About forty now attend my Bible-reading.