The “little girl” referred to received soon after a letter from Miss Payson.  In enclosing it to a friend, more than thirty-seven years later, she wrote:  “I cried bitterly when she left us for Richmond.  She was out and out good and true.  When my father was taking leave of us, the last night in Washington, she proposed that as we had enjoyed so much together, we should not separate without a prayer of thanks and blessing-seeking, a proposal to which my father most heartily responded.”  Here is an extract from the letter: 

When I look over my school-room I am frequently reminded of you, for my thirty-six pupils are, most of them, about your age.  I have some very lovable girls under my wing.  I should be too happy if there were no “unruly members” among these good and gentle ones; but in the little world where I shall spend the greater part of the next eight months, as well as in the great and busy one, which as yet neither you or I know much about, I fancy there are mixtures of “the just and the unjust,” of “the evil and the good.”  We have a very pleasant family this year.  The youngest (for I omit the black baby in the kitchen) we call Lily.  She is my pet and plaything, and is quite as affectionate as you are.  Then comes a damsel named Beatrice, who has taken me upon trust just as you did.  You may be thankful that your parents are not like hers, for she is to be educated for the world; music, French and Italian crowd almost everything else out of place, and as for religious influences, she is under them here for the first time.  How thankful I feel when I see such cases as this, that God gave me pious parents, who taught me from my very birth, that His fear is the beginning of wisdom!  My room-mate we call Kate.  She is pious, intelligent, and very warm-hearted, and I love her dearly.  She is an orphan—­Mrs. Persico’s daughter ...

I am rather affectionate by nature, if not in practice, and though I know that nearness to the Friend, whom I hope I have chosen, could make me happy in any circumstances, I do not pretend to be above the desire for earthly friends, provided He sees fit to give them to me.  I believe my father used to say that we could not love them too much, if we only gave Him the first place in our hearts.  Let us earnestly seek to make Him our all in all.  It is delightful, in the midst of adversities and trials, to be able to say “There is none upon earth that I desire besides Thee,” but it requires more grace, I think, to be able to use such language when the world is bright about us.  You have known little of sorrow as yet, but if you have given your whole, undivided heart to God, you will not need affliction, or to have your life made so desolate that “weariness must toss you to His breast.”  There is a bright side to religion, and I love to see Christians walking in the sunshine.  I trust you have found this out for yourself, and that your hope in Christ makes you happy in the life that now is, as well as gives you promise of blessedness in that which is to come.