To the Same, Newport, July 20.

George and I went to Rochester, taking M. with us, last Wednesday and got back Friday night.  We had one of those visits that make a mark in one’s life; seeing Mr. and Mrs. Leonard, and Mrs. Randall, and Miss Deborah, [5] so fond of us, and all together we were stirred up as we rarely are, and refreshed beyond description.  We rowed on Mr. Leonard’s beautiful, nameless lake, fished, gathered water-lilies, ate black Hamburg grapes and broiled chickens, and wished you had them in our place.  Mr. L.’s mother is a sweet, calm old lady, with whom I wanted to have a talk about Christian perfection, in which she believes; but there was no time.  It was a great rest to unbend the bow strung so high here at Newport, where there is so much of receiving and paying visits.  I have been reading a delightful French book, the history of a saintly Catholic family of great talent and culture, six of whom, in the course of seven years, died the most beautiful, happy deaths.  I am going to make an abstract of it, for I want everybody I love to get the cream of it.  You would enjoy it; I do not know whether it has been translated.

To the Same, Dorset, July 26.

Here begins my first letter to you from your old room, whence I hope to write you regularly every week.  That is the one only little thing I can do to show how truly and constantly I sympathise with you in your sore straits.  It distresses me to hear how much you are suffering, and at the same time not to be near enough to speak a word of good cheer, or to do anything for your comfort.  It grieves me to find how insecure my health is, for I had promised to myself to be your loving nurse, should any turn in your disease make it desirable.  Miss Lyman boards here, but rooms at the Sykes’, and her friend Miss Warner is also here, but rooms out.  Miss W. is in delicate health, takes no tea or coffee, and is full of humor.  We have run at and run upon each other, each trying to get the measure of the other, and shall probably end in becoming very good friends.

It is a splendid day, and we feel perfectly at home, only missing you and finding it queer to be occupying your room.  What a nice room it is!  How I wish you were sitting here with me behind the shade of these maple trees, and that I could know from your own lips just how you are in body and mind.  But I suppose the weary, aching body has the soul pretty well enchained.  Never mind, dear, it won’t be so always; by and by the tables will be turned, and you will be the conqueror.  I like to think that far less than a hundred years hence we shall all be free from the law of sin and death, and happier in one moment of our new existence, than through a whole life-time here.  Rest must and will come, sooner or later, to you and to me and to all of us, and it will be glorious.  You may have seen a notice of the death of Prof.  Hopkins’ mother at the age of ninety-five.  But for this terribly hot weather, I presume she might have lived to be one hundred.