How gladly I would go, if I could, to see you all, and talk over with you the thousand things that are filling our minds and hearts!  We can not drain this bitter cup at one draught and then go on our way as though it had never been.  The loss of a mother is never made up or atoned for; and ours was such a mother; so peculiar in her devotion and tenderness and sympathy!  I can not mourn that her sorrowful pilgrimage is over, can not think for a moment of wishing she were still on earth, weeping and praying and suffering—­but for myself and for you and for all I mourn with hourly tears.  She has sacrificed herself for us.

To her friend, Miss Lord, she writes, Jan. 31: 

It seems to me that every day and hour I miss my dear mother more and more, and I feel more and more painfully how much she suffered during her last years and months.  Dear Louise, I thought I knew that she could not live long, but I never realised it, and even now I keep trying to hope that she has not really gone.  Just in this very spot where I now sit writing, my dear mother’s great easy-chair used to sit, and here, only a year ago, she was praying for and loving me.  O, if I had only known she was dying then, and could have talked with her about heaven till it had grown to seeming like a home to which she was going, and whither I should follow her sooner or later!  But it is all over and I would not have her here again, if the shadow of a wish could restore her to us.  I only earnestly long to be fitting, day by day, to meet her again in heaven.  God has mingled many great mercies with this affliction, and I do not know that I ever in my life so felt the delight of praying to and thanking Him.  When I begin to pray I have so much to thank Him for, that I hardly know how to stop.  I have always thought I would not for the universe be left unchastised—­and now I feel the smart, I still can say so.  Lotty’s visit was a great comfort and service to me, but I was very selfish in talking to her so much about my own loss, while she was so great a sufferer under hers.  Since she left my little boy has been worse than ever and pined away last week very rapidly.  You can form no idea, by any description of his sufferings, of what the dear little creature has undergone since his birth.  I feel a perfect longing to see Portland and mother’s many dear friends there, especially your mother and a few like her.  I am very tired as I have written a great part of this with baby in my lap—­so I can write no more.

To Mrs. Stearns, Feb. 17, 1849.

Dear little Eddy has found life altogether unkind thus far, and I have had many hours of heartache on his account but I hope he may weather the storm and come out safely yet.  The doctor examined him all over yesterday, particularly his head, and said he could not make him out a sick child, but that he thought his want of flesh owing partly to his sufferings but more to the great loss of sleep occasioned by his