So; he had his easel, his big portfolio, and charcoal, in great style, but only took one lesson, he hated it so.  I don’t see what his mother was made of.  I sympathise with your fear of spending too much time adorning your home, etc., etc.  It is a nice question how far to go and how far to stay.  But I honestly believe that a bare, blank, prosaic house makes religion appear dreadfully homely.  We enjoy seeing our children enjoy their work and their play; is our Father unwilling to let us enjoy ours?  In a German book [17] I translated, a little boy is very happy in making a scrap-book for a little friend, and God is represented as being glad to see him so happy.  And I don’t believe He begrudged your making me that pretty picture, or did not wish me to make yours. (By-the-bye, when you have time, tell me how to do it.) It seems to me we are meant to use all the faculties God gives us; to abuse them is another thing.  I feel that I am having a vacation, and wonder how long it is going to last.  I do not know how I should have stood the tremendous change in my life, through my husband’s change of profession, if I had not had this resource of painting.  O, how I do miss his preaching!  How I miss my pastoral work!  Dr. Buck is on his dying bed, and longing to go. [18]

To her eldest Son, New York, March 11, 1877.

We had an excellent sermon from Dr. Vincent this morning, which he repeated by request.  Last evening we had Chi Alpha, and as I saw this body of men enter the dining-room, I wondered whether I had borne any minister to take up your father’s and my work when we lay it down.

18th.—­I thought within myself, as I listened to a sermon on the union of Christ and the believer, whether I should have the bliss of hearing you preach.  Let me see; how old should I have to be, at soonest?  Sixty-two; the age at which my ancestors died, unless they died young.  I got a beautiful letter, a few days ago, from a minister in Philadelphia, the Rev. Mr. Miller, who has 1,300 members in his church, and says if he could afford it he would give a copy of Greylock to every young mother in it.

I went to Mrs. P.’s funeral on Friday.  She wanted to die suddenly, and had her wish.  She ate her breakfast on Tuesday; then went into the office and arranged papers there; her husband went out at ten, and shortly after, she began to feel sick and the girls made her go to bed.  One of them went out to do some errands, and the other sat in the room; she soon heard a sound that made her think her mother wanted something, and on going to her found her dead.  Dr. P. got home at twelve, long after all was over.  He told me it was the most extraordinary death he ever heard of, but his theory was that a small clot of blood arrested the circulation, as she had no disease.  I had a talk with C. about his wife’s sudden death.  I had already written him and sent him a note.  I cut from the Evening Post the slip I enclose about Mr. Moody’s question-drawer.  I wish I could hope for as sudden a death as Mrs. P.’s.