University of Virginia Library

". . . Yesterday afternoon and to-day I have been very busy
attending at the Sunday-School Union and calling on the leading
clergy in regard to my work. They are very kind and favorable
thus far, though it is not the season for presenting the subject,
as most of them are just on the eve of having confirmations. I
may possibly preach two or three times to-morrow, though I am
only positively engaged to Mr. Suddards.

"Last evening I went round to deliver Dr. Dunbar's note to
Dr. Bell. He is evidently a man of intellect and science, and,
I should think, as represented by Dr. D., judicious and skilful.
He suffers himself with something of the same gastric soreness I
experience. He enjoined upon me to be much more regular in
my hours of rest, generally retiring by ten; to take a tepid bath
when convenient; to apply friction freely to the surface of the
body; to take systematic but not excessive exercise; and to use
all care to coax into activity the torpid functions of the liver.

". . . Dear love, lean more confidingly on the tender mercy of a
covenant Saviour and unfailing friend. Just think of the promises.
How exceedingly great and precious they are! And though you
and I are both partakers of infirmity, and can with reason from
our hearts address the Lord in the publican's prayer, yet do I
feel assured, on the simple grounds of God's covenant in Christ,
and the evidence of a living, though incomplete, faith on the part
of us both, that, if summoned before the Lord this night, the issue
would be grace triumphant to salvation. And in this joyful hope
will I more humbly and steadily serve God, His Spirit helping
me. So will you, my beloved wife.

"A word for all the children. In their endeavors conscientiously
to carry out the plan laid down for them, I hope they will
be considerate of the proportion of duties. It is not mere fidelity
in lessons and in order that I desire from them, but consideration,
circumspection, and energy, as under God's eye. And I would
have them all bear in mind the great injunction, 'Seek ye first
the kingdom of God, and His righteousness.' What, my dear
children, are all other things worth without this? What account
need be taken of any other deficiency if this be really had? In
addition to your own letters, my dear, I should like to get them

from each of the children in order,—Sandie, Mary, Rose, Will P.,
and Will W., if he will write to me; and I will reply to each in
turn. It will be good exercise for them, and two of them might
write a week. So that, your letters coming between theirs, I
may hear almost daily."

"My dear Son,—On the other page I have put the problems,
simplified as well as I could manage in the little time I have had.
I hope you can understand them without much trouble. And I
do not care about your giving any considerable time to them, or
to any of these lessons at present. As the weather may permit,
busy yourself out-of-doors, with the hot-bed and other work in
the garden. Nor do I mean that either to interfere with your play.

"We had a common Irish boy in the stage who afforded a good
deal of amusement by his characteristic humor. A Catholic.
He told us about the 'Dippers,' as a strange sect he had seen in
Buchanan, and in whom he did not believe at all. The notion
of baptizing in old James River was horrible to him, and especially
in February amid the ice. Though poor, and under age, he
has been in Ireland, Scotland, England, France, and the United
States. I was a good deal struck by his ready quotations from
the Bible, and his apparent reverence for its high authority. I
earnestly wish you all, my child, may reverently appropriate the
divine wisdom of the holy Scriptures."

". . . You will be anxious to hear from me as soon as possible.
But before I say anything about myself or things around
me I must speak of you all. I cannot hear how you are for some
days, and am unavoidably anxious, though I intrust you all to
God in the hope that grace, mercy, and peace may keep you. My

main fear is about Martha" (a servant); "her headache may prove
incipient typhoid; still, as Lucy did not have it she may escape.
. . . To go on about myself, etc. The cars travelled very fast
between New York and New Haven, gradually emptying themselves
in the towns and villages along the route. It is almost a
continuous village street the whole way. Country in the main
rugged, and perhaps less productively cultivated than I expected,
yet pervaded by a pleasant air of enterprise and thrift, as we have
always thought of New England. As long as light lasted I lived
by my eyes; afterwards a pleasant-looking gentleman took the
seat by me and we entered into conversation, soon getting on the
Northern and Southern question. He was very earnest antislavery,
though quite as earnest against the radical abolitionists.
I, however, set the case before him according to my own convictions,
and apparently succeeded in modifying his ideas; and when
we reached Boston he thanked me for the pleasant chat, begged
to know my name, and gave his own as Mr. Edmund Dwight,
son of the Rev. Dr. Dwight, of one of the American Missionary
Boards.

"When I awoke this morning it was raining hard, and has been
pouring all day. After breakfast I went to the American Sunday-School
Union Depository, with a letter of introduction from Mr.
Porter; was very politely treated. Met a member of the State
Senate, who also introduced slavery. He is a conservative. But
he told me one-third of the Massachusetts Legislature is composed
of the most lawless radicals,—ignorant and undisciplined,
but self-reliant, bold, and active,—ready to push abolitionism to
the very death. Next I went to call on the bishop; very kind;
asked me to dine with him to-morrow. Next visited Dr. Vinton;
also very kind. Am to preach for him Sunday morning, for the
bishop in the afternoon or the following Sunday morning. Vinton
took me to the State-House. The Lower House rather a rabble.
The Senate more dignified, but with marks of a condition of things
I should grieve over in Virginia. Boston is unlike all our other
cities; utter irregularity in the whole chaos of streets; not half
the ambition in building so striking in New York.

"I am now preparing a sermon for Dr. Vinton's church Sunday
morning. In conversation with him the best plan was discussed,
and my quoting the text, 'This people have I formed for

myself,' etc., so took his fancy that he requested me to put my
thoughts for his congregation to that heading. It will push me,
but no matter if it be well done, and I think I can so do it,—and
the fuller occupation the better, here by myself this rainy day.
My Unity article has occupied my thoughts in part, and to work
it up will be an amusement to me in the loneliness of my home
separation.

"You must determine what you want about the Convention,
and let me know what I am to get before my return. Let Sandie
ask Mr. Campbell to look at the garret- and cellar-windows, and
see if they ought not to be properly fixed before that time. The
sashes from the hot-bed may do for the cellar, as far as they will go.
It may be well also to continue the walk below the garden just as I
did the other part. I suppose our neighbors will bear part of the
expense and the vestry part. But if not, I would sooner bear the
whole myself than have it so untidy when the bishop and the
others have to walk over it. . . . My letter of Saturday told you
of my preparing for Vinton in the morning a new sermon. In the
afternoon I went to preach the other for the bishop, but he and
his assistant had heard of the one in the morning, and insisted
on my repeating it at Trinity. The people very attentive. I
am having some circulars printed and shall send them to different
parties. From time to time I take a stroll. The Common
is well worth walking on. You would enjoy it. I have hardly
seen anything finer. As in all other large places, one so entirely
a stranger as I am must find it hard to get acquainted with the
inhabitants. Mr. M. took me to the Athenæum, containing a
fine library, sculptures, paintings, etc. Besides moving about in
connection with my work, I am writing away at my article for Dr.
Dogget.[1] I began to write last night, and hope to have some ten
or twelve pages by to-night. . . . It is now past six P.M., and since
little past five this morning I have been hard at work: first for
two hours on my Unity article, and then till one seeing about my
circulars, and riding out to Brookline to see Dr. Stone, for whom
I am to preach Sunday morning. Since getting back I have been
engaged in folding and directing the circulars, which will keep me
busy all day to-morrow. I rejoice to hear of Lella being so far

convalescent. Don't let her indulge any humor that may bring
on a relapse. Tell her if she is a good girl I will find something
pretty for her. I shall not be able to reach home before the 12th
of May, and have so little leisure day or night that I cannot give
my thoughts to what may be needful in the way of preparation
for the Convention, so you must among you think and plan, and
let me know what you need. . . . You see I have changed my
lodgings. This hotel is not near so pleasant, but much less costly
than the Tremont. I have not had time yet to see much of the
city. Indeed, except the harbor and the country around, after
the Common and the streets facing it, Boston has not much to be
seen. The residence part is quiet and many of the houses handsome,
but the streets are too narrow. The pride of Boston takes
a different direction from that of New York. There it is full of
display. Here it is of a deeper, loftier tone; a good deal of
simplicity with not a little coldness.

"The common people do not please me in their appearance.
The very sharpening of the wits by continual effort to make
their way so cultivates selfishness that you can see it in every
lineament and motion. This is not prejudice but fact. May the
day never come when all the land is pervaded by the eager race
for benefit to number one thus exhibited! I went yesterday
afternoon to call on Mr.—. The servant took my name,
and, after keeping me a minute or so in the hall, returned to say
that Mr.—was engaged with company and could not see me.
Of course I shall trespass on him no more. These are the things
I shrink from in such work. To be treated as if I were some
beggar,—and, indeed, not so well as I would treat the poorest
creature that bears the stamp of humanity. But you need not
suppose I care particularly. Not at all. I have learned that
if my comfort is to be a foot-ball for other people's whims,—if
I am to depend on their good opinions of me for peace of mind,
—I am likely to be, as St. Paul says, 'Of all men most miserable.'
No, no. I remember that inward support which is not so easily
taken away, and look to my own mind and my own home for the
satisfaction which, under heaven's goodness, I may be permitted
to enjoy. And if on the whole it be best,—if Providence so indicate,
—I can, with considerable indifference as to its annoyances,
go on with this work. I am longing for the day when I can start

homeward. Absence can be borne as a duty, but it is a hard
trial. . . . Yesterday on the street I met the Rev. Mr. Mason,
with whom I have formed a pleasant acquaintance, and he told
me he was on his way to an ordination in Trinity Church,—the
bishop's. I accompanied him as the best thing I could do at the
time. The bishop at once asked me to read the service and join
in the laying on of hands, as it was to the Presbyterate. By the
time it was over it was late enough for me to get to my room
and dress for dining at Mr. Reynolds's, and I barely got there in
time,—half-past two. The bishop and myself the only guests.
After dinner Mr. Reynolds took me a long and beautiful drive to
Cambridge, where we visited, under the escort of two students,
the hall containing their old paintings, library, etc. It is a beautiful
place, admirably suited to its purpose, but for the withering
influence of Unitarianism; a blight, by the way, upon all that is
hopeful in the social future of Boston. More than half the upper
circle here is proudly heretical in that way, looking with open
scorn upon the forms of orthodoxy which their fathers cherished,
—Congregationalism, etc., though the Episcopal Church, but for
the inroads of Puseyism, would have won over not a few. Indeed,
as it is, through intermarriages, etc., a good many of the
younger Unitarians are brought over to the Episcopal Church;
and they hardly rest contented under our service, and the preaching
they hear from the bishop and Vinton and Mason, if any of
the Unitarian leaven remains. After seeing the college we drove
round through beautiful Brookline, one of the gems of the earth;
through Roxbury, and back into Boston,—twenty miles in two
hours and a half.

"I had engaged to lecture to Mr. Mason's candidates for confirmation
and communicants at half-past seven, so Mr. R. drove
me to the church, where I addressed fifty or sixty persons on
Ephesians vi., dwelling especially on the Christian armor. Had
a good deal of ease in utterance, and the people seemed seriously
attentive. Mason thanked me warmly for my 'excellent address.'
. . . To-day Mr. Adams's 'South Side View of Slavery' was
handed me by a gentleman, and I have read it rapidly. Infinitely
more just than Mrs. Stowe's romance. Not hiding the manifold
evils of slavery, but very truly contending, I think, that in itself
it is not sinful, and is even a mighty agency of Providence in

mysteriously working out a hopeful destiny for the African race.
With some modifications—such as establishing some tribunal of
appeal in cases of maltreatment (rather impracticable), legalizing
marriages, prohibiting the sale of children under a given age, say
twelve or fourteen, away from their mothers, etc.—he thinks their
condition would be the best of all the lower operatives on earth.
I could but think of them to-day at Lowell. Those girls—with
their three dollars a week—steaming the livelong day amid the
din of machinery that deadens every sense, standing forever over
the clattering looms or spindles, and inhaling an atmosphere
charged with the mingled fragrance of fish oil and fetid exhalations,
and with common dust interspersed with cotton or woollen
fibre, seemed to me doomed to a harder lot than thousands of
slave girls.

"About Sue's question as to what the children had better read,
now they have done Virgil, I hardly know. Livy and Tacitus
are both too difficult, and I rather think the question is between
Sallust and Cicero. Suppose she takes either of these as they
may be convenient. But I am suggesting on paper what I hope
soon to be able to settle in person,—very soon after this reaches
you."

". . . The village of Cape Island, where the hotels are, is on a
sandy, grassy plain. The yards or lawns reach to the border of
the beach, where there is a sudden break or descent of ten or
twelve feet. There the dressing-sheds are constructed; and, at
eleven o'clock each day, all sizes and ages don their grotesque
attire and go—sometimes barefooted—across the soft sand to the
water's edge. This shelves off so gradually that you may walk
out with ease a great distance to or even beyond the breakers.
Hundreds and thousands of people are here, and a more exciting,
laughable scene you never looked upon. There they are, waist-deep,
men, women, boys, and girls, mingled undistinguishably, for
the dress makes them all alike, and all like ditchers or fishermen.
See that fat, clumsy old lady, squat on the beach, awaiting the
next breaker. It comes up. Over she rolls, with two feet of briny
foam over her. She, half drowned, plunges, tumbles about, gets
her head up at last with a gurgling struggle, and, almost spent,
crawls back where she can get her breath before another wave
strikes her. Next to her is a laughing girl trying to swim, while
a stronger hand holds her belt; and so on throughout the congregated
multitude. It is very delightful, and I did wish for some
of you to enjoy it with me. S. would delight in it. The outlandish
costumes are very amusing, and the pell-mell in which
you partake, without losing a particle of your own propriety. . . .
You will be glad to learn that the Sunday-School Union Board
willingly accept my proposition. They give eight hundred
dollars for the service I propose, and make it one thousand if
it turn out well. I start on Monday for a Western tour,—
Wheeling, Cincinnati, Louisville, Chicago, Milwaukee, Cleveland,
Rochester, and several other places, and then home, if the good
Lord prospers."

"My dear little Girl,—As I have not written to you yet, a
half-hour shall be spent this morning in writing what you may
claim as your own letter, though it will have to be read to you by
your mamma. You see by the heading of the page where I am.
A letter to your mamma from Cleveland, Ohio, will have let you
know that I was to come on here Monday. I did so, and got to
my room about eight o'clock in the evening. At night the moon
was shining very brightly, and I walked out with a party whom
I accidentally met, and we got a tolerable moonlight view of the
wonderful Falls. But it was two hours after, when everybody
else was asleep, that I got a view by myself that was altogether
the most wonderful thing that I ever expect to see. My rough
sketch will help you to understand something of it. I stood on
the American side, when all living things were as still as death.
Before me was the great, dashing cataract, gleaming in the beams
of the moon; below, the gulf into which the waters are poured,
sending up its ever-ascending cloud of spray; under and around
me the trembling earth, whose very rocks are made to vibrate by
the mighty power of the fall; in my ear the thunder of its roar;
and above me the vast arch of heaven, clear, quiet, and solemn,
with three objects of surpassing beauty conspicuous,—the silvery
moon, the planet Jupiter, and, I think, Saturn. Your mamma
will tell you about these, and all the hard words I use. And you
can form some notion, young as you are, how all that I saw and
heard made me feel at such a time. It was, I suppose, something
as the Jews felt when they saw and heard the wonderful things in
God's presence at Mount Sinai. Something as the disciples felt
when our Saviour said to the winds and waves, 'Peace, be still;
and there was a great calm.' Something as we shall feel when,
as I trust we shall, we enter heaven, and look upon the glorious
throne, and listen to the songs of praise."