undone so much that I ought to do, she would try to comfort me and to encourage me to exercise more faith by responding, “Oh, you don’t know what a great sinner I am; but Christ’s love is greater still.”  There was a helpful, assuring, sunshiny influence about her piety which I have rarely seen or felt in any other human being.  And almost daily, during all the years of separation, I have been conscious of this influence in my own life.

I remember her as very retiring in company, even among our own people.  But if there were children present, she would gather them about her and hold them spell-bound by her talk.  Oh, she was a marvellous storyteller!  How often have I seen her in the midst of a little group, who, all eyes and ears, gazed into her face and eagerly swallowed every word, while she, intent on amusing them, seemed quite unconscious that anybody else was in the room.  Mr. H——­ used to say, “How I envy those children and wish I were one of them!”

Mrs. Prentiss received much attention from persons outside of our congregation, and who, from their position and wealth, were pretty exclusive in their habits.  But they could not resist the attraction of her rare gifts and accomplishments.  New Bedford at that time, as you know, had a good deal of intellectual and social culture.  This was particularly the case among the Unitarians, whose minister, when you came to us, was that excellent and very superior man, the Rev. Ephraim Peabody, D.D., afterwards of King’s Chapel in Boston.  One of the leading families of his flock was the “Arnold family,” whose garden and grounds were then among the finest in the State and at whose house such men as Richard H. Dana, the poet, the late Professor Agassiz, and others eminent for their literary and scientific attainments, were often to be seen.  This whole family were warmly attached to Mrs. Prentiss, and after you left New Bedford, often referred to their acquaintance with her in the most affectionate manner.  And I believe Mr. Arnold and his daughter used to visit you in New York.  The father, mother, daughter, and aunt are all gone.  And what a change have all these vanished years wrought in the South Trinitarian society!  I can think of only six families then worshipping there, that are worshipping there now.  But so long as a single one remains, the memory of Mrs. Prentiss will still be precious in the old church.

The story of the New Bedford years may be told, with slight additions here and there, by Mrs. Prentiss’ own pen.  Most of her letters to her own family are lost; but the letters to her husband, when occasionally separated from her, and others to old friends, have been preserved and afford an almost continuous narrative of this period.  A few extracts from some of those written in 1845, will show in what temper of mind she entered upon her new life.  The first is dated Portland, January both, just after Mr. Prentiss received the call to New Bedford: