"I hope you are seeing your way clearly to faith in God and His dear Son. A sure trust in our Heavenly Father is the only true consolation in this world of change and sorrow. That brings peace."
Lady Henry Somerset to Mrs. Moulton
"I well understand what you say about looking onward. I think our eyes are turned that way when the steps of life lead us nearer to the journey's end with each setting sun. It is absorbingly interesting. Yes, I believe the love of God will be closest; and, in the last, victorious."
What the words were to which these were replies may in part be gathered from the following:
Mrs. Moulton to William Winter
Durnham House, Chelsea, London,
October 3, 1894.
Dear Willie: I hope your lecture last night was a success, but it seems to me that all you do is. Yes,—how well I remember that seventieth-birthday breakfast to Dr. Holmes. We sat very near each other, you and I, and I know how your words moved me, as well as how they moved Dr. Holmes. I felt his death very keenly, but I knew him far less than you did. To know him at all was to love him. How strange that you should have written of so many great pilgrims into the unknown. Thank God for your immortal hope. To me the outlook darkens as I draw nearer and nearer to the end. I am appalled by the immensity of the universe, and the nothingness of our little human atom among the infinite worlds. But God knows what is to come. You are happier than most in the love that surrounds you.
Thank you a thousand times for your dear letter. If I go to New York or you come to Boston, do not let us fail to meet, for the time in which earthly meetings are possible is short. Oh, how I hope there may be a life to come in which we shall find lost loves and hopes, and above all, lost possibilities. I think it is hardest of all to me to think what I might have been, might have done, and to be so utterly discontented with myself as I am. If you pray, say a prayer sometimes for one of the truest and fondest of your many friends,—this wanderer,
L.C.M.