This is your father’s birthday, and I have given him, to his great delight, a Fairbanks postal scale.  His twenty-years-old one would not weigh newspapers or books, and it is time for an improvement on it.  On Thursday evening there was a festival at our church in aid of sick mission children.  Everybody was there with their children, and it was the nicest affair we ever had.  M. and I went and enjoyed it ever so much.  I took between four and five dollars to spend, though I had given between twenty and thirty to the mission, but did not get a chance to spend much, as Mr. M. took me in charge and paid for everything I ate.  Your father and I rather expect to go to East River, Conn., tomorrow to help Mrs. Washburn celebrate her seventieth birthday; but the weather is so cold he doubts whether I had better go.  A. went on a long drive on Friday and brought back a host of wild flowers, which I tried with some failure and some success to paint.

May 19th.—­We went to East River on Monday afternoon and came home on Thursday, making a delightful visit.  On Tuesday Mrs. W. and I went to Norwich to see the Gilmans.  I was very tired when we got back, and had to go to bed at half-past seven.  The next day it rained; so Mrs. W. and I fell to painting.  She became so interested in learning Mrs. Fisher’s system that she got up at five the next morning and worked two hours.  In the evening your father gave his lecture at a little club-room, got up chiefly by Mr. and Mrs. Washburn at their own expense.  It is just such a room as I should like to build at Dorset.  On Thursday morning Mrs. W. took me out to drive through their own woods and dug up some wild flowers for me.  A. has a Miss Crocker, an artistic friend from Portland, staying with her—­a very nice, plucky girl.  She wants me to let her take my portrait. [5] H. is full of a story of a pious dog, who was only fond of people who prayed, went to church regularly, and, when not prevented, to all the neighborhood prayer-meetings, which were changed every week from house to house; his only knowledge of where they would be held being from Sunday notices from the pulpit!  I believe this the more readily because of Pharaoh’s always going to my Bible-reading at Dorset and never barking there, whereas if I went to the same house to call he barked dreadfully.

We are constantly wondering what you boys will be.  Good men, I hope, at any rate.  Good-night, with a kiss from your affectionate mother.

The substance of the following letter of Mrs. Washburn, giving an account of the visit to East River, as also her impressions of Mrs. Prentiss, was written in response to one received by her from an old friend in Turk’s Island:  [6]