The following was addressed to a friend, whose home was already blessed with six fine boys: 

DORSET, Sept. 16, 1868.

Dear Mr. B.:—­I am just as glad as I can be!  I said it was a girl, and I knew it was a girl, and that is the reason it is a girl.  Give my best love to Mrs. B., and tell her I hope this little damsel will be to her like a Sabbath of rest, after the six week and work days she has had all along.  It is hard to tell which one loves best, one’s girls or one’s boys, but it is pleasant to have both kinds...  I hope your place has as appropriate a name as ours has had given to it—­“Saints’ Rest"!!—­and that you will fill it full of saints and angels; only let them be girls, you have had boys enough.

* * * * *

III.

The Year 1877.  Death of her Cousin, the Rev. Charles H. Payson.  Illness and Death of Prof.  Smith.  “Let us take our Lot in Life just as it comes.”  Adorning one’s Home.  How much Time shall be given to it?  God’s Delight in His beautiful Creations.  Death of Dr. Buck.  Visiting the sick and bereaved.  An Ill-turn.  Goes to Dorset.  The Strangeness of Life.  Kauinfels.  The Bible-reading.  Letters.

During the early months of 1877 Mrs. Prentiss’ sympathies were much excited by sickness and death among her friends.

“I spend a deal of time,” she wrote, “at funerals and going to see people in affliction, and never knew anything like it.”  And wherever she went, it was as a daughter of consolation.  The whole year, indeed, was marked by a very tender and loving spirit, as also by unwonted thoughtfulness.  But it was marked no less by the happiest, most untiring activity of both hands and brain.  During the month of January she wrote the larger portion of a new serial for The Christian at Work.  It would seem as if she foresaw the end approaching and was pressing toward it with eager steps and a glad heart.

To her eldest Son, New York, Jan. 28, 1877.

The great event of last week was cousin Charles’ unexpected death. [14] Your father and I attended the funeral, in his church, which was crowded to overflowing with a weeping audience.  Most of the ministers we know were there.  Cousin G. came on Friday night and said nothing would comfort him like hearing your father preach and he promised to do so.  I went with him to Inwood, and we have just got back.  Your father preached a beautiful sermon and paid a glowing tribute to cousin Charles in it, and I am very glad I went.  After the funeral yesterday I came home and put up some chicken-jelly I had made for Prof.  Smith, and carried it down to him; there I met Dr. Gould, of Rome, who had seen him, and said he considered his case a very critical one. Feb. 4th.—­Your father was invited to repeat his lecture on Recollections of Hurstmonceux and Rydal Mount, and did so, yesterday morning, in our lecture-room, which was filled with a fine audience, mostly strangers.  What have you on your natural bracket?  And have you put up your leaves on your windows?  Mine are looking splendidly.  H. is burning one of them with a magnifying-glass your father gave me at Christmas.  The sun does lie delightfully in this room.  I must now go to the Smiths.  All send love.