"A culmination of anxiety for this day, desired and yet dreaded. My head growled a little at waking, but not badly. My voice seemed all right, but how about the matter of my sermon? Was it all worth while, and on Whitsunday too? I wore my white cashmere dress. Laura went with me to church. C. G. A. was there. As he led me to the pulpit, the congregation rose. The service was very congenial and calming to my anxiety. I read the sermon quite audibly from beginning to end. It was listened to with profound attention, if I may say so."
"May 20.... Marion Crawford arrived soon after three for a little visit. He looks greatly improved in health since I last saw him. He must have passed through some crisis and come out conqueror. He has all his old charm...."
She was lamenting the death of her cousin and childhood playfellow, Dr. Valentine Mott Francis, when "a much greater affliction" fell upon her in the death of her son-in-law, David Prescott Hall. "This hurts me," she writes, "like a physical pain."
To Florence
Oak Glen, July 3, 1907.
My dearest dear Flossy,—
You are quite right in saying that we greatly need the consoling belief in a future life to help us bear the painful separation which death brings. Surely, the dear Christ believed in immortality, and promised it to faithful souls. I have myself derived great comfort from this belief, although I must confess that I know nothing about it. You may remember what [Downer] said to your dear father: "I don't know anything about it, but Jesus Christ certainly believed in immortality, and I pin my faith on him, and run for luck."... Alice and her trio of babes came safe to hand this morning. Frances at once began to spread the gravel from outdoors on the best staircase, but desisted when forbidden to do so.... Farewell, dearest child. You have had a grievous loss, and will feel it more and more. We must trust in God, and take our sorrows believing in the loving fatherhood. Maud writes me that she suffers an irreparable loss in dear David's death....
Your loving
Mother.
Much work was on hand this summer: a poem for Old Home Week in Boston, another for the Cooperstown Centennial, a paper on the "Elegant Literature of Fifty Years Since," one for the "Delineator" on "The Three Greatest Men I Have Known." These were Ralph Waldo Emerson, Theodore Parker, and Dr. Howe. She spent much time and pains on this article. She read Elliot Cabot's "Life of Emerson," which she thought "certainly a good piece of work, but deficient, it seems to me, in the romantic sympathy which is the true interpretation of Emerson and of all his kind."
She "hammered" hard on the two poems, with good results.
"July 14. I can hardly believe it, but my miserable verses, re-read to-day, seemed quite possible, if I can have grace to fill out their sketchiness. Last word ton-ight: I think I have got a poem. Nil desperandum!"
"July 24. Difficult to exaggerate the record of my worry this morning. I feel a painful uncertainty about going to Boston to read my poem for Old Home Week. Worse than this is my trouble about two poems sent me while in Boston, with original music, to be presented to the committee for Home Week, which I have entirely forgotten and neglected. To do this was far from my intention, but my old head fairly gave out in the confusion of the various occasions in which I was obliged to take an active part."
She yielded to entreaty and stayed at home, and was rewarded by "a most gratifying letter from Edward Everett Hale, telling me that Josiah Quincy read my poem with real feeling, and that it was warmly received."