and slept in peace.  We are encompassed with mercies; the physician who drives over from Manchester is as skilful as he is conscientious; this house is admirably adapted to sickness, the stairway only nine feet high, plenty of water, and my room, which I have given her, admits of her lying in a draught as the doctor wishes her to do.  While the nurse is sleeping, as she is now, A. and I take turns sitting out on the piazza, where there is a delicious breeze almost always blowing.

The ladies here are disappointed that I can no longer hold the Bible-readings, but it is not so much matter that I am put off work if you are put on it; the field is one, and the Master knows whom to use and when and where.  We have been reading with great delight a little book called “Miracles of Faith.”  I am called to M., who has had a slight chill, and of course high fever after it.  It seems painfully unnatural to see my sunbeam turned into a dark cloud, and it distresses me so to see her suffer that I don’t know how I am going to stand it.  But I won’t plague you with any more of this, nor must I forget how often I have said, “Thy will be done.”  You need not doubt that God’s will looks so much better to us than our own, that nothing would tempt us to decide our child’s future.

To her eldest Son, Dorset, Sept. 19, 1875.

Your letters are a great comfort to us, and the way to get many is to write many.  M.’s fever ran twenty-one days, as the doctor said it would, and began to break yesterday.  On Friday it ran very high; her pulse was 120 and her temperature 105—­bad, bad, bad.  She is very, very weak.  We have sent away Pharaoh and the kitten; Pha would bark, and Kit would come in and stare at her, and both made her cry.  The doctor has the house kept still as the grave; he even brought over his slippers lest his step should disturb her.  She is not yet out of danger; so you must not be too elated.  We four are sitting in the dining-room with a hot fire; papa is reading aloud to A. and H.; it is evening, and M. has had her opiate, and is getting to sleep.  I have not much material of which to make letters, sitting all day in a dark room in almost total silence.  The artists are rigging up the church beautifully with my flowers, etc., Mr. Palmer and Mr. Lawrence lending their aid.  Your father is reading about Hans Andersen; you must read the article in the Living Age, No. 1,631; it is ever so funny.

I had such a queer dream last night.  I dreamed that Maggie plagued us so that your father went to New York and brought back two cooks.  I said I only wanted one.  “Oh, but these are so rare,” he said; “come out and see them.”  So he led me into the kitchen, and there sat at the table, eating dinner very solemnly, two ostriches!  Now what that dream was made of I can not imagine.  Now I must go to bed, pretty tired.  When you are lonely and blue, think how we all love you.  Goodnight, dear old fellow.