Every one has his burden to bear, and must bear it alone with trust and resignation—that is the thing to struggle and to pray for.
Kranichstein, September 1st.
* * * I shall get a comforter done for good Mrs. Brown, kind old woman. I am glad she does not forget me, and shall be pleased to do any little thing that can give her pleasure. Will you tell her the plaid she made me still goes everywhere with me? How is Mrs. Grant?
Louis is gone, and I have a good deal to do every day. We breakfast at half-past eight, then I have baby, and take the children out till eleven. I then have business, baby, and, at one, the elder girls alternately for French reading. After luncheon I write my letters, etc., and before five go out. In the evenings I read, and have supper at eight with the two ladies.
Ella is another child since she has been at the seaside—fine color, no longer pale and languid, learns well, and is quite different. Ernie the same, bright and fresh; while before they had been looking pulled and weak, outgrowing their strength.
“Sunny” is the picture of robust health, and sweet little “sister Maly” sits up quite alone, and is very neat and rosy, with such quick eyes, and two deep dimples in her cheeks—a great pet, and so like my poor Frittie.
The return here has been very painful, and days of great depression still come, when I am tormented with the dreadful remembrance of the day I lost him. Too cruel and agonizing are those thoughts. I dwell on his rest and peace, and that our sufferings he cannot know. What might not life have brought him? Better so! but hard to say, “God’s will be done.”
Kranichstein, September 15th.
* * * ——’s conversion has created no smaller sensation with us than elsewhere, and the Times criticised his step so sharply. It remains a retrograde movement for any Protestant, how much more so for a man of his stamp! Quite incomprehensible to me.
* * * This Catholic movement is so un-English. I think, among those Ritualists there are bonâ fide Catholics who help to convert. * * *