The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss Part 24

And now the children have got together again, and I must go and stay with them till their bed-time, when, partly for the sake of the walk, partly because they asked us, we twain are going to see the Smiths.

I rather think, my dear, that if, as you say, you could see all my thoughts, you would drop me as you would a hot potato. You would see many good thoughts, I won't deny that, and some loving ones; but you would also see an abominable lot of elated, conceited, horrid ones; self-laudation even at good planned to do, and admired before done. But G.o.d can endure what no mortal eye could; He does not love us because we are so lovely, but because He always loves what He pities. I fall back upon this thought whenever I feel discouraged; I was going to say _sad_, but that isn't the word, for I never do feel sad except when I've been eating something I'd no business to! Good-bye, dearie.

_To the Same, New York, Dec. 3, 1868._

I think I must indulge myself, my dear, in writing to you to-night, it being really the only thing I want to do, unless it be to lie half asleep on the sofa. And that I can't do, for there's no sofa in the room! The cold weather has made it agreeable to have a fire in the dining-room grate, and this makes it a cheerful resort for the children, especially as the long table is very convenient for their books, map-drawing, etc. And wherever the rest are the mother must be; I suppose that is the law of a happy family, in the winter at least.

The reason I am so tired to-night is that I have been unexpectedly to Newark. I went, as soon as I could after breakfast, to market, and then on a walk of over two miles to prepare myself for our sewing-circle! I met our s.e.xton as I was coming home, and asked him to see what ailed one of the drawers of my desk that wouldn't shut. We had a terrible time with it, and I had to take everything out, and turn my desk topsy-turvy, and your letters and all my other papers got raving distracted, and all mixed up with bits of sealing-wax, old pens, and dear knows what not, when down comes A. from the school-room, to say that Mrs. Stearns had sent for me to come right out, thinking she was dying. I knew nothing about the trains, always trusting to Mr. Prentiss about that, but in five minutes I was off, and on reaching the depot found I had lost a train by ten minutes, and that there wouldn't be another for an hour.

Then I had leisure to remember that Mr. P. was to get home from Dorset, that I had left no message for him, had hid away all the letters that had come in his absence, where he couldn't find them; that if it was necessary for me to stay at Newark all night he would be dreadfully frightened, etc., etc. Somehow I felt very blue, but at last concluded to get rid of a part of the time by hunting up some dinner at a restaurant.

When I at last got to Newark, I found that Mrs. Stearns' disease had suddenly developed several unfavorable symptoms. She had made up her mind that all hope was over, had taken leave of her family, and now wanted to bid me good-bye. She held my hands fast in both hers, begging me to talk. I spoke freely to her about her death; she pointed up once to an illumination I gave her last spring: SIMPLY TO THY CROSS I CLING.

"That," she said, "is all I can do." I said all I could to comfort her, but I do not know whether G.o.d gave me the right word or not.

On my return, as I got out of the stage near the corner of our street, whom should my weary eyes light on but my dear good man, just got home from Dorset; how surprised and delighted we were to meet so unexpectedly! M. rushed to meet us, and afterward said to me, "I have three great reliefs; you have got home; papa has got home; and Aunt Anna is still alive." My children were never so lovely and loving as they are this winter; my home is almost too luxurious and happy; such things don't belong to this world. We have just heard of the death in Switzerland of Mr. Prentiss' successor at New Bedford, cla.s.smate of one of my brothers, and some one has sent a plaintive, sweet little dying song written at Florence by him. Now I am too f.a.gged to say another word.

_Dec. 4th._--"I do not get _any_ time to write; each day brings its own special work that can't be done to-morrow; as to letters, I scratch them off at odd moments, when too tired to do anything else. What a resource they are! They do instead of crying for me. And how many I get every week that are loving and pleasant!

What do you think of this? I hope it will make you laugh--a lady told me she never confessed her sins aloud (in prayer) lest Satan should find out her weak points and tempt her more effectually! And I want to ask you if you ever offer to pray with people? I never do, and yet there are cases when nothing else seems to answer. Oh, how many questions of duty come up every hour, and how many reasons we have every hour to be ashamed of ourselves!

_Monday morning._--It was a shame to write to you, when I was so tired that I could not write legibly, but my heart was full of love, and I longed to be near you. Now Monday has come, a lowering, forbidding day, yet all is sunshine in my soul, and I hope that may make my home light to my beloved ones, and even reach you, wherever you are. I am going to run out to see how Mrs. Stearns is. Our plan is for me to make arrangements to stay with her, if I can be of any use or comfort. I literally love the house of mourning better than the house of feasting.

All my long, long years of suffering and sorrow make sorrow-stricken homes homelike, and I can not but feel, because I know it from experience, that Christ loves to be in such homes. So you may congratulate me, dear, if I may be permitted to go where He goes. I wish you could have heard yesterday's sermon about G.o.d's having as _characteristic, individual_ a love to each of us as we have to our friends. Think of that, dear, when you remember how I loved you in Mrs.

G.'s little parlor! Can you realise that your Lord and Saviour loves you infinitely more? I confess that such conceptions are hard to attain....

Can't you do M---- S---- up in your next letter, and send her to me on approbation? Instead of being satisfied that I've got you, I want her and everybody else who is really good, to fill up some of the empty rooms in my heart. This is a rambling, scrambling letter, but I don't care, and don't believe you do. Well, good-bye; thank your stars that this bit of paper hasn't got any arms and can't hug you!

_To Mrs. Leonard, New York, Dec. 13, 1868._

There is half an hour before bed-time, and I have been thinking of and praying for you, till I feel that I _must_ write. I forgot to tell you, how the verses in my Daily Food, on the day of your dear husband's death, seem meant for you:

"Thou art my refuge and portion."--Ps. cxliii. 5.

'Tis G.o.d that lifts our comforts high, Or sinks them in the grave; He gives, and blessed be His name!

He takes but what He gave.

The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away.--JOB i. 21.

I have had this little book thirty-three years, it has travelled with me wherever I have been, and it has been indeed my song in the house of my pilgrimage. This has been our communion Sunday, and I have been very glad of the rest and peace it has afforded, for I have done little during the last ten days but fly from one scene of sorrow to another, from here to Newark and from Newark to Brooklyn.... So I have alternated between the two dying beds; yesterday Jennie P. went into a convulsion just as I entered the room, and did not fully come out of it for an hour and a half, when I had to come away in order to get home before pitch dark. What a terrible sight it is! They use chloroform, and that has a very marked effect, controlling all violence in a few seconds. Whether the poor child came out of that attack alive I do not know; I had no doubt she was dying till just before I came away, when she appeared easier, though still unconscious. The family seem nearly frantic, and the sisters are so upset by witnessing these turns, that I shall feel that I must be there all I can. I am in cruel doubt which household to go to, but hope G.o.d will direct.

Mr. Prentiss is a good deal withered and worn by his sister's state; he had never, by any means, ceased to hope, and he is much afflicted. She and Jennie may live a week or more, or go at any moment. In my long hours of silent musing and prayer, as I go from place to place, I think often of you. I think one reason why we do not get all the love and faith we sigh for is that we try to force them to come to us, instead of realising that they must be G.o.d's free gifts, to be won by prayer....

And now Mr. P. has come up-stairs rolled up in your afghan, and we have decided to go to both Newark and Brooklyn to-morrow, so I know I ought to go to bed. You must take this letter as a great proof of my love to you, though it does not say much, for I am bewildered by the scenes through which I am pa.s.sing, and hardly fit therefore to write. What I do not say I truly feel, real, deep, constant sympathy with you in your sorrow and loneliness. May G.o.d bless you in it.

[1] Dorset is situated in Bennington county, about sixty miles from Troy and twenty-five miles from Rutland. Its eastern portion lies in a deep-cut valley along the western slope of the Green Mountain range, on the line of the Bennington and Rutland railroad. Its western part--the valley in which Mrs. Prentiss pa.s.sed her summers--is separated from East Dorset by Mt. Aeolus, Owl's Head, and a succession of maple-crested hills, all belonging to the Taconic system of rocks, which contains the rich marble, slate, and limestone quarries of Western Vermont. In the north this range sweeps round toward the Equinox range, enclosing the beautiful and fertile upland region called The Hollow. Dorset belonged to the so-called New Hampshire Grants, and was organised into a township shortly before the Revolutionary War. Its first settlers were largely from Connecticut and Ma.s.sachusetts. They were a hardy, intelligent, liberty-loving race, and impressed upon the town a moral and religious character, which remains to this day.

[2] Mrs. Arthur Bronson, of New York. A life of Mrs. Prentiss would scarcely be complete without a grateful mention of this devoted friend and true Christian lady. She was the centre of a wide family circle, to all of whose members, both young and old, she was greatly endeared by the beauty and excellence of her character. She died shortly after Mrs.

Prentiss.

[3] While supposing that her brothers had been burnt out and had, perhaps, lost everything, she wrote to her husband with characteristic generosity: "If they did not kill themselves working at the fire, they will kill themselves trying to get on their feet again. Every cent I have I think should be given them. My father's church and everything a.s.sociated with my youth, gone forever! I can't think of anything else."

[4] Mrs. McCurdy died at her home in New York in December, 1876. A few sentences from a brief address at the funeral by her old pastor will not be here out of place. "Her natural character was one of the loveliest I have ever known. Its leading traits were as simple and clear as daylight, while its cheering effect upon those who came under its influence was like that of sunshine. She was not only very happy herself--enjoying life to the last in her home and her friends--but she was gifted with a disposition and power to make others happy such as falls to the lot of only a select few of the race. Her domestic and church ties brought her into relations of intimate acquaintance and friendship with some of the best men of her times. I will venture to mention two of them: her uncle, the late Theodore Frelinghuysen, one of the n.o.blest men our country has produced, eminent alike as statesman, scholar, and Christian philanthropist; and the sainted Thomas H.

Skinner, her former pastor. Her sick-room--if sick-room is the proper name--in which, during the last seventeen years, she pa.s.sed so much of her time, was tinged with no sort of gloom; it seemed to have two doors, one of them opening into the world, through which her family and friends pa.s.sed in and out, learning lessons of patience and love and sweet contentment: the other opening heavenward, and ever ajar to admit the messenger of her Lord, in whatever watch he should come to summon her home. The place was like that upper chamber facing the sunrising, and whose name was _Peace_, in which Bunyan's Pilgrim was lodged on the way to the celestial city. How many pleasant and hallowed memories lead back to that room!"

[5] Old New Bedford friends.

[6] Fritz und Maria und Ich. Von Mrs. Prentiss. Deutsche autorisirte Ausgabe. Von Marie Morgenstern. Itzchoe, 1874.

[7] She gave me the pet-name of "f.a.n.n.y" because she did not like mine, and there was an old joke about "John."--E. A. W.

[8] The custom related to a pious salutation, with which two _friends_, or even _strangers_, greet each other, when meeting on the mountain highways and pa.s.ses in certain districts of Tyrol. _"Gelobt sei Jesu Christ!"_ cries one; _"In Ewigkeit, Amen!"_ answers the other (_i.e._, "Praised be Jesus Christ!" "For evermore, Amen!") The following lines are from Mrs. F.'s Poem:

"When the poor peasant, alpenstock in hand, Toils up the steep, And finds a friend upon the dizzy height Amid his sheep,

"They do not greet each other as in our Kind English way, Ask not for health, nor wish in cheerful phrase prosperous day;

"Infinite thoughts alone spring up in that Great solitude, Nothing seems worthy or significant But heavenly good;

"So in this reverent and sacred form Their souls outpour,-- Blessed be Jesus Christ's most holy name!

'For evermore!'"

[9] Rev. Asa c.u.mmings, D.D., of Portland, for many years editor of the Christian Mirror; one of the weightiest, wisest and best men of his generation.

CHAPTER IX.

STEPPING HEAVENWARD.

1869.

I.

Death of Mrs. Stearns. Her Character. Dangerous Illness of Prof. Smith.

Death at the Parsonage. Letters. A Visit to Va.s.sar College. Letters.

Getting ready for General a.s.sembly. "Gates Ajar."

A little past three o'clock on Sat.u.r.day afternoon, January 2, 1869, Anna S. Prentiss, wife of the Rev. Jonathan F. Stearns, D.D., fell asleep in Jesus. The preceding pages show what strong ties bound Mrs. Prentiss to this beloved sister. Their friendship dated back thirty years; it was cemented by common joys and common sorrows in some of their deepest experiences of life; and it had been kept fresh and sweet by frequent intercourse and correspondence. Mrs. Stearns was a woman of uncommon attractions and energy of character. She impressed herself strongly upon all who came within the sphere of her influence; the hearts of her husband's people, as well as his own and those of her children, trusted in her; and the whole community where she dwelt mourned her loss. She had been especially endeared to her brother Seargent, with whom she spent several winters in the South prior to her marriage. Her influence over him, at a critical period of his life, was alike potent and happy; their relation to each other was, in truth, full of the elements of romance; and some of his letters to her are exquisite effusions of fraternal confidence and affection. [1] Her letters to him, beginning when she was a young girl and ending only with his life, would form a large volume. "You excel any one I know," he wrote to her, "in the kind and gentle art of letter-writing." In the midst of his early professional triumphs he writes:

You do not know what obligations I am under to you; I owe all my success in this country to the fact of having so kind a mother and such sweet affectionate sisters as Abby and yourself. It has been my only motive to exertion; without it I should long since have thrown myself away. Even now, when, as is frequently the case, I feel perfectly reckless both of life and fortune, and look with contempt upon them both, the recollection that there are two or three hearts that beat for me with real affection, even though far away--comes over me as the music of David did over the dark spirit of Saul. I still feel that I have something worth living for.

For years her letters helped to cherish and deepen this feeling. He thus refers to one of them:

I can not tell how much I thank you for it. I cried like a child while reading it, and even now the tears stand in my eyes, as I think of its expressions of affection, sympathy, and good sense.... I wish you were here now--oh, how I do wish it! But you will come next fall, won't you?

and be to me

The antelope whose feet shall bless With her light step my loneliness.

But my candle burns low, and it is past the witching hour of night.

Whether sleeping or waking, G.o.d bless you and our dear mother, and all of you. Good-night--good-night. My love loads this last line.