I can not help writing you again, though I did send you a letter last night.  It is a very pleasant morning, and I think of you all the time and love you with the happiest tears in my eyes.  I have just been making some nice crispy gingerbread to send Mrs. H——­, as she has no appetite, and I thought anything from home would taste good to her.  I hope this will please you.  Mother called with me to see her yesterday.  She looks very ill.  I have no idea she will ever get well.  We had a nice time at the garden last night.  Mr. and Miss Arnold came out and walked with us nearly an hour, though tea was waiting for them, and Miss A. was very particularly attentive to me (for your dear sake!), and gave me flowers, beautiful ones, and spoke with much interest of your sermons.  Oh, I am ready to jump for joy, when I think of seeing you home again.  Do please be glad as I am.  I suppose your mother wants you too; but then she can’t love you as I do—­I’m sure she can’t—­with all the children among whom she has to divide her heart.  Give my best love to her and Abby.  How I wish I were in Portland, helping you pack your books.  But I can’t write any more as we are going to Mrs. Gibbs’ to tea.  Mother is reading Hamlet in her room.  She is enjoying herself very much.

Mrs. Gibbs, whose name occurs in this letter, was one of those inestimable friends, who fulfill the office of mother, as it were, to the young minister’s wife.  She was tenderly attached to Mrs. Prentiss and her loving-kindness, which was new every morning and fresh every evening, ceased only with her life.  Her husband, the late Capt.  Robert Gibbs, was like her in unwearied devotion to both the pastor and the pastor’s wife.

The summer was passed in getting settled in her new home, and receiving visits from old friends.  Early in the autumn she spent several weeks in Portland.  After her return, Nov. 2, she writes to Miss Thurston: 

I was in Portland after you had left, and got quite rested and recruited after my summer’s fatigue, so that I came home with health and strength, if not to lay my hand to the plough, to apply it to the broom-handle and other articles of domestic warfare.  Just what I expected would befall me has happened.  I have got immersed in the whirlpool of petty cares and concerns which swallow up so many other and higher interests, and talk as anxiously about good “help” and bad, as the rest of ’em do.  I sometimes feel really ashamed of myself to see how virtuously I fancy I am spending my time, if in the kitchen, and how it seems to be wasted if I venture to take up a book.  I take it that wives who have no love and enthusiasm for their husbands are more to be pitied than blamed if they settle down into mere cooks and good managers....  We have had right pleasant times since coming home; never pleasanter than when, for a day or two, I was without “help,” and my husband ground coffee and drew water for me, and thought everything I made tasted good.  One