profligate, been compelled into a certain familiarity with the
vices that his soul abhors? Has he, through trials, close
following in dread march through his household, sweeping the
hearthstone bare of life and love, still striven hard for
strength to say, "It is the Lord! let Him do what seemeth to Him
good"--and sometimes striven in vain, until the kindly Light
returned? If through all these dark waters the scornful reviewer
have passed clear, refined, free from stain,--with a soul that
has never in all its agonies cried "lama sabachthani,"--still,
even then let him pray with the Publican rather than judge with
the Pharisee.

"Jan. l0th, 1849.

"Anne had a very tolerable day yesterday, and a pretty quiet
night last night, though she did not sleep much. Mr. Wheelhouse
ordered the blister to be put on again. She bore it without
sickness. I have just dressed it, and she is risen and come
down-stairs. She looks somewhat pale and sickly. She has had one
dose of the cod-liver oil; it smells and tastes like train oil. I
am trying to hope, but the day is windy, cloudy, and stormy. My
spirits fall at intervals very low; then I look where you counsel
me to look, beyond earthly tempests and sorrows. I seem to get
strength, if not consolation. It will not do to anticipate. I
feel that hourly. In the night, I awake and long for morning;
then my heart is wrung. Papa continues much the same; he was very
faint when he came down to breakfast. . . . Dear E----, your
friendship is some comfort to me. I am thankful for it. I see few
lights through the darkness of the present time, but amongst them
the constancy of a kind heart attached to me is one of the most