ORVILLE DEWEY.
To William Cullen Bryant, Esq.
SHEFFIELD, Jan. 7, 1865.
THANKS for a beautiful record of a beautiful festival [At the "Century," New York, Nov. 5, 1864, in honor of Mr. Bryant's seventieth birthday.] to a beautiful—but enough of this. You must have [278] had a surfeit. 'T was all right and due, but it must have been a hard thing to bear,—to be so praised to your very face. . . . Your reply was admirable,—simple, modest, quiet, graceful,—in short, I don't see how it could be better. For the rest, I think our cousin Waldo chiselled out the nicest bit of praise that was done on the occasion.
To Rev. Henry W. Bellows, D.D.
SHEFFIELD, Feb. 24, 1865.
MY DEAR FRIEND,—I was intending to write to you ten days ago, and should have done so before now, but my mind has been engrossed with a great anxiety and sorrow; my grandson and namesake was taken with a fever, which went to the brain, and he died last Monday evening. I cannot tell you—you could hardly believe what an affliction it has been to me. He was five years old, a lovely boy, and, I think, of singular promise,—of a fine organization, more than beautiful, and with a mind inquiring into the causes and reasons of things, such as I have rarely seen. . . . We meant to educate this boy; I hoped that he would bear up my name. God's will be done!
It was of the coming Convention that I was going to write to you; but now, just now, I have no heart for it. But I feel great interest in the movement. Would that it were possible to organize the Unitarian Church of America,—to take this great cause out of the hands of speculative dispute, and to put it on the basis of a working institution. To find a ground of union out of which may spring boundless freedom of thought,—is it impossible? I should like to see a church which could embrace and embody all sects.
[279]To his Daughter Mary.
SHEFFIELD, April 11, 1865.