DEAR MRS. WASHBURN:—If you judge by my handwriting, you will have to conclude that I am 100 years old. But it all comes of my carrying a heavy bag too long, and is all my own fault for trying to do too many errands in one trip. Your dear little chair, the like of which I should love to give to 540 people, only cost $2.50, so I enclose my check for the rest of your $10. We sent off Mrs. Badger's parcel early this morning. I hope digging and driving and packing and climbing in my behalf, has not quite killed you. A lot of flowers in two boxes came to me from Matteawan while I was gone, and as my waitress fancied I had been shopping—as if I should shop at East River!—she did not open the boxes or inform the children, so the spectacle of withered beauty was not very agreeable. A. and M. send love and thanks. The flowers you gave me look beautifully. Give our love to Mr. W. and Julia, and write about her. We shall not soon forget our charming visit to East River!
In acknowledging this note Mrs. Washburn alludes to one of Mrs. Prentiss' most striking traits—the eager promptitude with which she would execute little commissions for her friends. It was as if she had taken a vow that there should not be one instant's delay.
I do hope you have not been made sick by doing so many errands in such a short time. The little chair has come and Mr. W. is much pleased with it. Nobody is so punctual as you. We were all amazed at receiving the picture so soon. How could you possibly have gotten home and packed it and marked the catalogues and bought the chair and written the check and sent me the little package of Japanese corn-seed and written me the note and have had a moment even to look at A.'s portrait? It is a mystery to me. You are a wonder of a woman! You are a genius! You are a beloved friend! I thank you again and again. Just think of the good you have done us. Shall I send you some more daisies? I have written in the greatest haste. That is the reason I have done no better and not because I am seventy years old.
Here is her last note to Mrs. Washburn, dated June 3:
The box of daisies, clover, and grass came on Saturday. We set the plants out in the box in which they came, and mixed the grass with what cut flowers we had, in the very prettiest receptacle for flowers I ever saw, just given M. The plants look this morning like a piece of Wildwood and a piece of you, and will gladden every spring we live to see…. We are packing for Dorset, though we do not mean to go if this weather lasts. I wonder if you have a "daily rose"? I have just bought one; first heard of it at the Centennial. It is said to bloom every day from May to December.
I am going out, now, to do ever so many errands for H.'s outfit for college. Give our dear love to Mr. Washburn and Julia. O, what a mercy it is to have somebody to love. [7]
On the 6th of June Mrs. Prentiss went to Dorset for the last time. Her husband, after her departure, thus referred to this period:
For four or five weeks after coming here she was very much occupied about the house, and seemed rather weary and care-worn. But the pressure was then over and she had leisure for her flowers and her painting, for going to the woods with the girls, and for taking her favorite drives with me. She spoke repeatedly of you and other friends. On the 23d of July I started for Monmouth Beach. The week preceding this little journey was one of the happiest of our married life. No words can tell how sweet and loving and bright—in a word, how just like herself—she was. The impassion of that week accompanied me to the sea-side and continued with me during my whole stay there. As day after day I sat looking out upon the ocean, or walked alone up and down the shore, she was still in all my thoughts. The noise of the breakers, the boundless expanse of waters, the passing ships, going out and coming in, recalled similar scenes long ago on the coast of Maine, before and after our marriage—scenes with which her image was indissolubly blended. Then I met old friends and found new ones, who talked to me with grateful enthusiasm of "Stepping Heavenward," "More Love to Thee, O Christ," and other of her writings. In truth, my feelings about her, while I was at Monmouth Beach, were quite peculiar and excite my wonder still. I scarcely know how to describe them. They were at times very intense, and, I had almost said, awe-struck, seemed bathed in a sweet Sabbath stillness, and to belong rather to the other world than to this of time and sense. How do you explain this? Was my spirit, perhaps, touched in some mysterious way by the coming event? Certainly, had I been warned that she was so soon to leave me, I could hardly have passed those days of absence in a mood better attuned to that in which I now think of her as forever at home with the Lord.
The following are two of her last letters:
To Mrs. Condict, Kauinfels, July 22, 1878.