I have wished all along, beyond anything else, not so much that we might have a pleasant home, pleasant scenery and circumstances, good society and the like, as that we might have good, holy influences about us, and God’s grace and love within us.  And for you, dear George, I did not so much desire the intellectual and other attractions, about which we have talked sometimes, as a dwelling-place among those whom you might train heavenward or who would not be a hindrance in your journey thither.  Through this whole affair I know I have thought infinitely more of you than of myself.  And if you are happy at the North Pole shan’t I be happy there too?  I shall be heartily thankful to see you a pastor with a people to love you.  Only I shall be jealous of them.

To her friend, Miss Thurston, she writes from New Bedford, April 28th: 

I thank you with all my heart for your letter and for the very pretty gift, which I suppose to be the work of your own hands.  I can not tell you how inexpressibly dear to me are all the expressions of affection I have received and am receiving from old friends.  We have been here ten days, and very happy days they have been to me, notwithstanding I have had to see so many strange faces and to talk to so many new people.  And both my sister and Anna tell me that the first months of married life are succeeded by far happier ones still; so I shall go on my way rejoicing.  As to what your brother says about disappointment, nobody believes his doctrine better than I do; but life is as full of blessings as it is of disappointments, I conceive, and if we only know how, we may often, out of mere will, get the former instead of the latter.  I have had some experience of the “conflict and dismay” of this present evil world; but then I have also had some of its smiles.  Neither of these ever made me angry with this life, or in love with it.  I believe I am pretty cool and philosophical, but it won’t do for me at this early day to be boasting of what is in me.  I shall have to wait till circumstances bring it out.  I can only answer for the past and the present—­the one having been blessed and gladdened and the other being made happy and cheerful by lover and husband.  I’ll tell you truly, as I promised to do, if my heart sings another tune on the 17th of April, 1848.  I only hope I shall enter soberly and thankfully on my new life, expecting sunshine and rain, drought and plenty, heat and cold—­and adapting myself to alternations contentedly—­but who knows?  We are boarding at a hotel, which is not over pleasant.  However, we have two good rooms and have home things about us.  I like to sit at work while Mr. Prentiss writes his sermons and he likes to have me—­so, for the present, a study can be dispensed with.  In a few weeks we hope to get to housekeeping.  I like New Bedford very much.

To her husband she writes, June 18: