This is the last entry in her journal for more than a year; her letters, too, during the same period are very few.  In August of 1857, she was made glad by the birth of another son, her fifth child.  Her own health was now much better than it had been for a long time; but that of her husband had become so enfeebled that in April, 1858, he resigned his pastoral charge and by the advice of his physician determined to go abroad, with his family, for a couple years; the munificent kindness of his people having furnished him with the means of doing so.  The tender sympathy and support which she gave him in this hour of extreme weakness and trial, more than everything else, after the blessing of Heaven, upheld his fainting spirits and helped to restore him at length to his chosen work.  They set sail for the old world in the steamship Arago, Capt.  Lines, June 26th, amidst a cloud of friendly wishes and benedictions.

[1] The friend was Mr. Wm. G. Bull, who had a summer cottage at Rockaway.  He was a leading member of the Mercer street church and one of the best of men.  The poor and unfortunate blessed him all the year round.  To Mrs. Prentiss and her husband he was indefatigable in kindness.  He died at an advanced age in 1859.

[2] Godman’s “American Natural History.”

[3] Mrs. Norman White, mother of the Rev. Erskine N. White, D.D., of New York.

[4] Her cousin, whose sudden death occurred under the same roof in October of the next year.

[5] “We were all weighed soon after coming here,” she wrote, “and my ladyship weighed 96, which makes me out by far the leanest of the ladies here.  When thirteen years old I weighed but 50 pounds.”

[6] Referring to “Little Susy’s Six Birthdays.”

[7] Little Susy’s Little Servants.

[8] A Life bid with Christ in God, being a memoir of Susan Allibone.  By Alfred Lee, Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Delaware.

[9] See appendix C, p. 539.

[10] Many years afterward, speaking to a friend of this illness, she related the following incident.  One day she lay, as was supposed, entirely unconscious and in articulo mortis.  Repeated but vain attempts had been made to administer a medicine ordered by the doctor to be used in case of extremity.  Her husband urged one more attempt still; it might possibly succeed.  She heard distinctly every word that was spoken and instantly reasoned within herself, whether she should consent or refuse to swallow the medicine.  Fancying herself just entering the eternal city, she longed to refuse but decided it would be wrong and so consented to come back again to earth.

CHAPTER VI.

IN RETREAT AMONG THE ALPS.

1858-1860.

I.

Life abroad.  Letters about the Voyage and the Journey from Havre to Switzerland.  Chateau d’Oex.  Letters from there.  The Chalet Rosat.  The Free Church of the Canton de Vaud.  Pastor Panchaud.