March 3d.—­We could with difficulty, and by taking turns, get through reading your letter—­not only because you so accurately describe our own feelings in regard to dear Abby, but because we feel so keenly for you.  I often detect myself thinking, “Now I will sit down and write Abby a nice long letter”; or imagining how she will act when we go home with our baby; and as you say, I dream about her almost every night.  I used always to dream of her as suffering and dying, but now I see her just as she was when well, and hear her advising this and suggesting that, just as I did when she was here last summer.  Life seems so different now from what it did!  It seems to me that my youth has been touched by Abby’s death, and that I can never be so cheerful and light-hearted as I have been.  But, dear Anna, though I doubt not this is still more the case with you, and that you see far deeper into the realities of life than I do, we have both the consolations that are to be found in Christ—­and these will remain to us when the buoyancy and the youthful spirit have gone from our hearts.

March 12th. ...  I had been reading a marriage sermon to George from “Martyria,” and we were having a nice conjugal talk just as your little stranger was coming into the world.  G. is so hurried and driven that he can not get a moment in which to write.  He has a funeral this afternoon, that of Mrs. H., a lady whom he has visited for two years, and a part, if not all, of that time once a week.  I have made several calls since I wrote you last—­two of them to see babies, one of whom took the shine quite off of mine with his great blue-black eyes and eyelashes that lay halfway down his cheeks.

The latter part of April she visited Portland; while there she wrote to her husband, April 27: 

Just as I had the baby to sleep and this letter dated, I was called down to see Dr. and Mrs. Dwight and their little Willie.  The baby woke before they had finished their call, and behaved as prettily and looked as bright and lovely as heart could wish.  Dr. Dwight held her a long time and kissed her heartily. [2] I got your letter soon after dinner, and from the haste and the je ne sais quoi with which it was written, I feared you were not well.  Alas, I am full of love and fear.  How came you to walk to Dartmouth to preach?  Wasn’t it by far too long a walk to take in one day?  I heard Dr. Carruthers on Sunday afternoon.  He made the finest allusion to my father I ever heard and mother thought of it as I did.  To-day I have had a good many callers—­among the rest Deacon Lincoln. [3] When he saw the baby he said, “Oh, what a homely creature.  Do tell if the New Bedford babies are so ugly?” Mrs. S., thinking him in earnest, rose up in high dudgeon and said, “Why, we think her beautiful, Deacon Lincoln.”  “Well, I don’t wonder,” said he.  I expect she will get measles and everything else, for lots of children come to see her and eat her up.  Mother, baby and I spend to-morrow at your mother’s.  Do up a lot of sleeping and grow fat, pray do!  And oh, love me and think I am a darling little wife, and write me loving words in your next letter. Wednesday.—­We have a fine day for going up to your mother’s.  And the baby is bright as a button and full of fun.  Aren’t you glad?