Very gratefully yours, JAMES M. LUDLOW.

In a letter dated May 3, 1880, Dr. Ludlow thus refers to these meetings: 

I regret that I can not speak more definitely of Mrs. Prentiss’ conversations with the young ladies of my charge, as it was my custom to withdraw from the room after a few introductory words, so that she could speak to them with the familiarity of a mother.  I know that all that group felt the warmth of her interest in them, the charm of her character which was so refined by her love of Christ and strengthened by her experience of needed grace, as well as the wisdom of her words.  I was impressed, from so much as I did hear of her remarks, with her ability to combine rarest beauty and highest spirituality of thought with the utmost simplicity of language and the plainest illustrations.  Her conversation was like the mystic ladder which was “set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven.” Her most solemn counsel was given in such a way as never to repress the buoyant feeling of the young, but rather to direct it toward the true “joy of the Lord.”  She seemed to regard the cheer of to-day as much of a religious duty as the hope for to-morrow, and those with whom she conversed partook of her own peace.  I shall always remember these meetings as among the happiest and most useful associations of my ministry in New York.

* * * * *

II.

The Moody and Sankey Meetings.  Her Interest in them.  Mr. Moody.  Publication of Griselda.  Goes to the Centennial.  At Dorset again.  Her Bible-reading.  A Moody-Meeting Convert.  Visit to Montreal.  Publication of The Home at Greylock.  Her Theory of a happy Home.  Marrying for Love.  Her Sympathy with young Mothers.  Letters.

The early months of 1876 were very busily spent in painting pictures for friends, in attendance upon Mr. Moody’s memorable services at the Hippodrome, and in writing a book for young mothers.  Before going to Dorset for the summer she passed a week at Philadelphia, visiting the Centennial Exhibition.  Her letters during the winter and spring of this year relate chiefly to these topics.

To a Christian Friend, Feb. 22, 1976.

You gave me a good deal of a chill by your long silence, and I find it a little hard to be taken up and dropped and then taken up; still, almost everybody has these fitful ways, and very likely I myself among that number.  Your little boy must take a world of time, and open a new world of thought and feeling.  But don’t spoil him; the best child can be made hateful by mismanagement.  I am trying to write a book for mothers and find it a discouraging work, because I find, on scrutiny, such awfully radical defects among them.  And yet such a book would have helped me in my youthful days.