You ask if I have been to hear Moody; yes, I have and am deeply interested in him and his work.  Yesterday afternoon he had a meeting for Christian workers, in which his sound common-sense created great merriment.  Some objected to this, but I liked it because it was so genuine, and, to my mind, not un-Christlike.  So many fancy religion and a long face synonymous.  How stupid it is!  I wonder they don’t object to the sun for shining.  I am glad you think Urbane may be useful, for I hear little from it.  Junia’s story is true as far as the laudanum and the blindness go; it happened years ago.  I do not know what religious effect it had.  As to the friend of whom you speak, she would not love you as you say she does if her case was hopeless; at least I don’t think so.  I am oppressed with the case of one who wants me to help him to Christ, while unwilling to confide to me his difficulties.  How little they know how we care for their souls!

To Mrs. George Payson, Feb 28, 1876.

I have been trying to do more than any mortal can, and now must stop to take breath and write to you.  In the first place, M.’s illness cut out three months; then fitting up G.’s room at Princeton took a large part of the next three; then ever so many people wanted me to paint them pictures; then I began a book; then Moody and Sankey appeared, and I wanted to hear them, and was needed to work in co-operation with them.  I don’t know how you feel about Moody, but I am in full sympathy with him, and last Friday the testimony of four of the cured “gin-pigs” (their own language) was the most instructive, interesting language I ever heard from human lips.  In talking to those he has drawn into the inquiry rooms, I find the most bitterly wretched ones are back-sliders; they are not without hope, and expect to be saved at last; but they have been trying what the world could do for them and found it a failure.  Their anguish was harrowing; one after another tried to help them, and gave up in despair.

I had a vase given me at Christmas somewhat like yours, but a trifle larger, and shaped like a fish.  The flowers never fell out but once.  I had two little tables given me on which to set my majolica vases, with India-rubber plants, which will grow where nothing else will; also a desk and bookcase, and two splendid specimens of grass which grew in California, and had been bleached to a creamy white.  They are more beautiful than Pampa, or even feather-grass.

A. is driven to death about a fair for the Young Women’s Christian Association.  I have given it a German tragedy which I translated a few years ago. [7] They expect to make $1,600 on it, but Randolph says if they make half that they may thank their stars.  I have spent all my evenings of late in revising it, and it goes to the printers to-day.  George is going to deliver a literary lecture for the same object this evening, this being the age of obedient parents.  No, I never saw and never painted any window-screens.