[3] “Oh, what a blessed thing it is to lose one’s will!  Since I have lost my will I have found happiness.  There can be no such thing as disappointment to me, for I have no desires but that God’s will may be accomplished.”  “Christians might avoid much trouble if they would only believe what they profess, viz.:  that God is able to make them happy without anything but Himself.  They imagine that if such a dear friend were to die, or such and such blessings to be removed, they should be miserable; whereas God can make them a thousand times happier without them.  To mention my own case:  God has been depriving me of one blessing after another; but as every one was removed, He has come in and filled up its place; and now, when I am a cripple and not able to move, I am happier than ever I was in my life before or ever expected to be; and if I had believed this twenty years ago, I might have been spared much anxiety.”

[4] The Right Rev. John Johns, Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church of Virginia, was a man of apostolic simplicity and zeal, and universally beloved.  An almost ideal friendship existed between him and Dr. Charles Hodge, of Princeton. Dear, blessed, old John, Dr. H. called him when he was seventy-nine years old.  See Life of Dr. Hodge, pp. 564-569.  Bishop Johns died in 1876.

[5] Das Bluemlein Wunderschoen. Lied des gefangenen Grafen, is the title of the poem.  Goethe’s Samtliche Werke.  Vol.  I., p. 151.

[6] See appendix A, p. 533.

[7] The horrible operation is over, Heaven be praised!  It was far more horrible than we had anticipated.  They were an hour and a quarter, before all was done.  I was very brave at first and wouldn’t leave the room, but I found myself so faint that I feared falling and had to go.  Lizzy behaved like a heroine indeed, so that even the doctors admired her fortitude.  She never spoke, but was deadly faint, so that they were obliged to lay her down that the dreadful wound might bleed; then there was an artery to be taken up and tied; then six stitches to be taken with a great big needle.  Most providentially dear Julia Willis came in about ten minutes before the doctors and though she was greatly distressed, she never faints, and staid till Lizzy was laid in bed....  She was just like a marble statue, but even more beautiful, while the blood stained her shoulders and bosom.  You couldn’t have looked on such suffering without fainting, man that you are.—­From a letter of Mrs. Payson, dated Boston, Sept. 2, 1844.

[8] Her friend, Miss Prentiss, had been married, in the previous autumn, to the Rev. Jonathan F. Stearns, of Newburyport.