Chapter XIV: Work and Play (3)

Let me express to you my _personal_ thanks for your most excellent serial. I feel that it has done a real good to thousands. You need to be placed in my position, receiving hundreds of letters daily from your readers, to be able to fully appreciate how intensely interested they are in the story. It does not seem to satisfy them to feel assured of Ruth's marriage, but they want _to be there_ and see it. Juliet, too, is not with them, as with you, a mere impersonation, but a living reality, and they will never rest till they hear from her. If I was a betting man I would bet five to one that what your husband struck out, is just exactly what is wanted. What do we men know about such things, anyhow?

A lady friend, well qualified to judge, writes to her:

I have read "Pemaquid," and have laughed till I cried, then cried and laughed together. In my humble opinion it is the brightest book you have written. You know how to make a saint and how to make a sinner. As for old Kezia Millet, with her great loving heart, if she is not a model of Christian "_consistency_" and a natural born poet, where will you find one? She is perfectly fascinating. How do you keep your wit so ready and so bright? I suppose you'll answer, "by using it." The chapter which contains Mrs. Woodford's interview with Rev. Mr. Strong (the dear old saint) in her penitential mood, is very, very admirable.

_To Mrs. George Payson, Dec. 20, 1877._

Before the year quite departs, I must tell you, my dear Margaret, how glad I am that you appreciate my dear, good bad Kezia. It is nineteen years since I read Adam Bede, but I remember Mrs. Poysen in general. Kezia is not an imitation of her; the main points of her character were written out long before Adam Bede appeared; I destroyed the book in which I trotted her out, but kept _her_, and once in a while tried her on my husband, but as he did not seem to see it, put her away in her green box, biding my time. As to Juliet, my good man _loathes_ so to read about bad people that he almost made me cut out all my last mention of her. I was in an unholy frame when I did it, and with reason, for they who like Pemaquid best, say it was a mistake not to dispose of her in some way. But as to Mrs. Woodford being a model mother, I did not aim to make her a model anything. All I wanted of her was to bring out the New England pecularities as they would appear to a worldly stranger. As to all parties _seeming_ indifferent about Juliet, you may be right; I was behind the scenes and knew they were not; but as I say, what I thought the best part of her, George made me cut out. No, I never knew any one sing exactly like Kezia, but there are such cases on record. There was "the Singing Cobbler," whose wife complained of him in court, and he defended himself so wittily in verse, that everybody sided with him, and his wife forgave his offence, whatever it might be. [22]

[1] The following is the passage referred to: "If you aspire to be a son of consolation; if you would partake of the priestly gift of sympathy; if you would pour something beyond commonplace consolation into a tempted heart; if you would pass through the intercourse of daily life with the delicate tact that never inflicts pain; if to that most acute of human ailments--mental doubt, you are ever to give effectual succor, you must be content to pay the price of the costly education. Like Him, you must suffer, being tempted."

[2] By the late Rev. William James, D.D.

[3] See appendix G, p.557.

[4] Then pastor of the Collegiate Reformed Church, Fifth avenue and Forty-eighth street, now of Brooklyn.

[5] "Account of the Union Meeting for the Promotion of Scriptural Holiness, held at Oxford, August 29 to September 7, 1874."

[6] "Account of the Union Meeting for the Promotion of Scriptural Holiness, held at Oxford, August 29 to September 7, 1874." P. 59.

[7] GRISELDA; A Dramatic Poem in Five Acts. _Translated from the German of_ FRIEDERICH HALM (Baron Münch-Bellinghausen), _by Mrs. E. Prentiss._

[8] How glad I was to see Griselda's fair face! She is a gem, and I am sure will prove a blessing as she moves about the world in her nobleness and purity, so exceedingly womanly and winning. The book is full of poetry, and held me spell-bound to the close. It is very musical, too, in its rich, pure English. I don't know how much of its poetic charm lies in the original or in your rendering, but as it is, it is "just lovely," as the girls say.--_Letter from Miss Warner._

[9] In a letter written in 1879, just after a visit to Dorset, Dr. Hamlin thus refers to them:

"Now that I have seen again those lights and shadows of the Green Mountains, as they lie around your Dorset home, I must tell you why they awakened such deep emotions. Forty-one years ago I was married to Miss Henrietta Jackson, the youngest daughter of the venerated and beloved pastor of Dorset, and we left that lovely valley for our oriental home. I had heard from her lips a glowing description of the magic work of light and shade upon those uplands and heights that lie west of the valley, before I had seen the place. The first morning of my first visit I recognised the truth and accuracy of her description, and was forced to confess that, although I had always admired cloud-shadows, I had never seen them in such rich display and constant recurrence. There were certain days, which we called field-days, when all their resources were called out, and they seemed hurrying in swift battalions to some great contest or grand coronation scene. But at other times they rested in calm repose as though the pulse of nature had ceased to beat... In our home upon the Bosphorus we were sometimes reminded of these scenes of her native valley. When, occasionally, the Black Sea clouds floated down in broken masses, and floods of light here and there poured through the darkly shadowed landscape, lighting up fragments of hill and vale to the very summits of Alem Dagh, her soul took flight to her beloved Dorset and all other thoughts vanished."

[10] On hearing of Mrs. Prentiss' death, the "poor, homeless fellow" wrote to her husband a touching letter of sympathy. The following is an extract from it:

It was, I must acknowledge, a cherished desire of your dear departed lady that I should walk in the footsteps of the Lord Jesus, and, to obtain that grace, I must invoke God's Power that I may accomplish that great Result. Dear sir, I would like to suggest to you that I am disgusted with a wandering life; would like to see Dorset next Summer and look on the grave of my greatest friend. Nothing could give me greater Pleasure than to be under the Influence of your Christian family; now, if I had any Employment, no matter how simple, in that locality for the winter, then I would feel Happy to go next season to your country Residence and offer my services free.

[11] Meeta Sophia Schaff died July 14, 1876, in the twenty-first year of her age. She had just returned from the Centennial. She was a young lady of unusual loveliness of character, and was deeply lamented by a wide circle of friends, both young and old.

[12] A printed copy of Lines on her Golden Wedding, written by Mrs. Prentiss.

[13] The article is entitled _Educated while Educating_, and appeared in the Brooklyn Journal of Education for March, 1875.

[14] The Rev. C. H. Payson. See the interesting Memoir of him, entitled "All for Christ," edited by his brother George, and published by the American Tract Society.

[15] See HENRY BOYNTON SMITH; His Life and Work. Edited by his Wife. A. C. Armstrong & Son. 1880.

[16] His biographer, Mr. Moore, relates of Lord Byron that in all the plenitude of his fame, he confessed that "the depreciation of the lowest of mankind was more painful to him than the applause of the highest was pleasing."

[17] _Peterchen and Gretchen_. She translated it at Genevrier during the illness of her children.

[18] Dr. Gurdon Buck. He died shortly afterwards. For more than a quarter of a century be had been a faithful friend of Mrs. Prentiss, and as their family physician had made both her and her husband his debtors alike by his kindness and his skill. With a generosity so characteristic of his profession, he refused, during all these years, to receive any compensation for his services. As a surgeon he stood in the front rank; some of the operations, performed by him, attracted wide attention for then--novelty and usefulness. He published an account of them, with illustrations, which greatly interested Mrs. Prentiss. She was almost as fond of reading about remarkable eases in surgery as about remarkable criminal trials.

Dr. Buck was one of the founders and first ruling elders of the Church of the Covenant. His gratuitous labors in connection with the New York Hospital and other public institutions were very great. He was a man of solid worth, modest, upright, and devoted to his Lord and Master.

[19] "One of my brightest recollections of this season at Dorset is our last Sunday before returning to town. We went in the phaeton to Pawlet, where I preached for the Rev. Mr. Aiken. The morning was pleasant, the road lay through a lovely mountain valley, and the beauty of nature was made perfect by the sweet Sabbath stillness; and our thoughts were in unison with the scene and the day. I preached on Rest in Christ, and the service was very comforting to us both. How well I recall the same drive and a similar service early in September of 1876, when prayer was my theme! What sweet talks and sweeter fellowship we had together by the way, going and coming!"--_Recollections of_ 1877-8.

[20] Recollections of 1876-7

[21] "Better is it sometimes to go down into the pit with him, who beholding darkness and bewailing the loss of consolation, crieth from the bottom of the lowest hell, My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me? than continually to walk arm in arm with angels, to sit, as it were, in Abraham's bosom, and to have no thought, no cogitation but this, '_I thank my God it is not with me as it is with other men._'"--HOOKER.

[22] A list of Mrs. Prentiss' writings, with brief notices of some of them, will be found at the end of the appendix, p. 568.