We mean to go out sledging. The cold, and all the ground being white this last month, has given me such bad eyes. I can do nothing of an evening at all, and reading even by daylight makes them so bad that they get quite red. The ladies read to me, instead, all sorts of instructive things. Louis has already found time to read through a whole volume of the “Lives of the Engineers.”[46] You could not have sent any thing that would interest him more. He thanks you so much for the pretty New Year’s wish also.
January 14th.
Thousand thanks for your dear letter, for the nice enclosure from Dr. Macleod, and for the beautiful sermon by Dean Stanley. One remark struck me as singularly applicable to dear Papa, where he says: “To die is gain; to be no longer vexed with the sight of evil, which they cannot control,” etc.—for dear Papa suffered when he saw others do wrong; it pained that good pure spirit: and though we long for him and want him, if we could call him back—even you who want him so much, I think would pause before you gave vent to the wish that would recall him. * * *
When trials come, what alone save faith and hope in a blessed future can sustain one!
* * * You can’t think how much I am interested in every little detail of your daily life. Besides, you know it cannot be otherwise. Please say kindest things to Brown,[47] who must be a great convenience to you.
January 20th.
* * * The more one studies and tries to understand those wonderful laws which rule the world, the more one wonders, worships, and admires that which to us is so incomprehensible; and I always wonder how there can be dissatisfied and grumbling people in this beautiful world, so far too good for our deserts, and where, after our duty is done, we hope to be everlastingly with those we love, where the joy will be so great and lasting that present sorrow and trouble must melt away before that sunshine.
January 23d.
* * * We have rain and warm high wind, and leave at four o’clock this afternoon. Ella has her bath as a bed, and Victoria sleeps in the bassinet, which is done up with chintz for the occasion. I don’t think they can catch cold. There is a stove in the centre compartment besides. You can fancy I feel shy going to Berlin into a perfectly new society; and I have been so little out on the whole since the year 1861. Marie Grancy[48] goes with us.
Berlin, January 29th.