The Story Lizzie Told was published about this time. It had already appeared in the Riverside Magazine. The occasion of the story was a passage in a letter from London written by a friend, which described in a very graphic and touching way the yearly exhibition of the Society for the Promotion of Window Gardening among the Poor. The exhibition was held at the "Dean's close" at Westminster and the Earl of Shaftesbury gave the prizes. [9]
No one of Mrs. Prentiss's smaller works, perhaps, has been so much admired as The Story Lizzie Told. It was written at Dorset in the course of a single day, if not at a single sitting; and so real was the scene to her imagination that, on reading it in the evening to her husband, she had to stop again and again from the violence of her emotion. "What a little fool I am!" she would say, after a fresh burst of tears. [10]
To Mrs. Leonard, New York, Oct. 16, 1870.
Your letter came in the midst of the wear and tear of A.'s return to us. We were kept in suspense about her from Monday, when she was due, till, Friday when she came, and it is years since I have got so excited and wrought up. They had a dreadful passage, but she was not sick at all. Prof. Smith is looking better than I ever saw him, and we are all most happy in being together once more. I can truly re-echo your wish that you lived half way between us and Dorset, for then we should see you once a year at least. I miss you and long to see you. How true it is that each friend has a place of his own that no one else can fill! I do not doubt that the 13th of October was a silvery wedding-day to your dear husband. His loss has made Christ dearer to you, and so has made your union more perfect. I suppose you were never so much one as you are now.
We have had a delightful summer, not really suffering from the heat; though, of course, we felt it more or less. All our nights were cool…. I can not tell you how Mr. P. and myself enjoy our country home. It seems as if we had slipped into our proper nook. But if we are going to do any more brainwork, we must be where there is stimulus, such as we find here. What a mixed-up letter! I have almost forgotten how to write, in adorning my house and sowing my seeds and the like.
To Mrs. Frederick Field, New York, Oct. 19th, 1870.
I deeply appreciate the Christian kindness that prompted you to write me in the midst of your sorrow. I was prepared for the sad news by a dream only last night. I fancied myself seeing your dear little boy lying very restlessly on his bed, and proposing to carry him about in my arms to relieve him. He made no objection, and I walked up and down with him a long, long time, when some one of the family took him from me. Instantly his face was illumined by a wondrous smile of delight that he was to leave the arms of a stranger to go to those familiar to him—such a smile, that when I awoke this morning I said to myself, "Eddy Field has gone to the arms of his Saviour, and gone gladly." You can imagine how your letter, an hour or two later, touched me. But you have better consolation than dreams can give; in the belief that your child will develop, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, into the perfect likeness of Christ, and in your own submission to the unerring will of God. I sometimes think that patient sufferers suffer most; they make less outcry than others, but the grief that has little vent wears sorely.
"Grace does not steel the faithful heart
That it should feel no ill,"
and you have many a pang yet before you. It must be so very hard to see twin children part company, to have their paths diverge so soon. But the shadow of death will not always rest on your home; you will emerge from its obscurity into such a light as they who have never sorrowed can not know. We never know, or begin to know, the great Heart that loves us best, till we throw ourselves upon it in the hour of our despair. Friends say and do all they can for us, but they do not know what we suffer or what we need; but Christ, who formed, has penetrated the depths of the mother's heart. He pours in the wine and the oil that no human hand possesses, and "as one whom his mother comforteth, so will He comfort you." I have lived to see that God never was so good to me as when He seemed most severe. Thus I trust and believe it will be with you and your husband. Meanwhile, while the peaceable fruits are growing and ripening, may God help you through the grievous time that must pass—a grievous time in which you have my warm sympathy. I know only too well all about it.
"I know my griefs; but then my consolations,
My joys, and my immortal hopes I know"—