Arabel's and my love to Annie. Won't she come to see us?


_To Mrs. Martin_
74 Gloucester Place, Portman Square, London: Jan. I, 1836.

My dearest Mrs. Martin,--I am half willing and half unwilling to write
to you when, among such dearer interests and deep anxieties, you may
perhaps be scarcely at liberty to attend to what I write. And yet I
_will_ write, if it be only briefly, that you may not think--if you
think of us at all--that we have changed our hearts with our residence
so much as to forget to sympathise with you, dear Mrs. Martin, or to
neglect to apprise you ourselves of our movements. Indeed, a letter
to you should have been written among my first letters on arriving in
London, only Henrietta (my scape-goat, _you_ will say) said, '_I_ will
write to Mrs. Martin.' And then after I had waited, and determined
to write without waiting any longer, we heard of poor Mrs. Hanford's
affliction and your anxiety, and I have considered day after day
whether or not I should intrude upon you; until I find myself--_thus_!

I do hope that you have from the hand of God those consolations which
only He in Jesus Christ can give to the so afflicted. For I know well
that you are afflicted with the afflicted, and that with you sympathy
is suffering; and that while the tenderest earthly comfort is
administered by your presence and kindness to your dear friends, you
will feel bitterly for them what a little thing earthly comfort is,
when the earthly beloved perish before them. May He who is the Beloved
in the sight of His Father and His Church be near to them and you, and
cause you to _feel_ as well as _know_ the truth, that what is sudden
sorrow, to our judgments, is only long-prepared mercy in _His_ will