Amelia's little girls are quiet, good children, to whom their father
writes what Mr. Underhill and Martha pronounce "beautiful" letters,
wherein he always styles himself their "broken-hearted but devoted
father." "Devotion," to my mind, involves self-sacrifice, and I
cannot reconcile its use, in this case, with the life of ease he
leads, while all the care of his children is thrown upon others. But
some people, by means of a few such phrases, not only impose upon
themselves but upon their friends, and pass for persons of great
sensibility.

As I have been confined to the house nearly the whole winter, I have
had to derive my spiritual support from books, and as mother
gradually recovered, she enjoyed Leighton with me, as I knew she
would. Dr. Cabot comes to see us very often, but, I do not now find
it possible to get the instruction from him I used to do. I see that
the Christian life must be individual, as the natural character
is-and that I cannot be exactly like Dr. Cabot, or exactly like Mrs.
Campbell, or exactly like mother, though they all three stimulate and
re an inspiration to me. But I see, too, that the great points of
similarity in Christ's disciples have always been the same. This is
the testimony of all the good books, sermons, hymns, and, memoirs I
read-that God's ways are infinitely perfect; that we are to love Him
for what He is, and therefore equally as much when He afflicts as
when He prospers us; that there is no real happiness but in doing and
suffering His will, and that this life is but a scene of probation
through which we pass to the real life above.