Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D.: Edited by His DaughterDewey, Orville
Religion
Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D.: Edited by His Daughter
Dewey, Orville
Dewey, Orville, 1794-1882
All send their love to you and yours.
Yours ever,
ORVILLE DEWEY.
To the Same.
ST. DAVID'S, March 7, 1872.
DEAR FRIEND--OF ALL MANKIND,--I see you have let them make you
President of the Bellevue Local Visiting Association. Was there nobody
else that could take that charge? Was it not enough for you to have the
Forty-ninth Street Hospital to look after? But M. says, "Let her; let
her work." And she talks about "living while you live," and comes at me
with such saws. Saws they may well be called, for they sever prudence
from virtue, instead of making them a rounded whole. The fact is,
nobody has any sense--I mean the perfect article--but me. For I say,
what if "living while you live" comes to not living at all? Is that
what you call working? And why not let other people work? Is Mrs. Lane
to be made the queen bee of New York philanthropy, and to become such
an enormous conglomeration of goodness [319] that she can't get out of
her hospital hive to visit her friends, nor let them visit her, with
any chance of seeing her? And is nobody worth caring for unless he has
been knocked down in the street, and has got a broken leg or a fever?
I am quite serious, though you may not think so. I do not like your
taking another hospital, or the visitation of it, in charge. It must
devolve an immense deal of care and thinking upon somebody. There 's
reason in all things, or ought to be. Your brains and eyes ought to be
spared from overwork. We shall hear of you as blind or paralytic next.
Tell your mother that we have to "stand to our colors" for the climate
of New England nowadays, else they would be all blown away. It 's
awful weather in New York too, I hope. I don't go out much. Really, if
this March were not-a march to spring, it would be a hard campaign.
With love to all your house, I am, as affectionately and warmly as the
weather will permit,
Yours,
ORVILLE DEWEY.
To Rev. Henry W. Bellows, D.D.
ST. DAVID'S, Feb. 21, 1873.
DEAR FRIEND,--I need not say we shall be rejoiced to see you. Don't
be proud, but it is "real good" of you. If "a saint in crape is twice
a saint in lawn," a friend in winter is twice a friend of any other
season. "If I shall be away?" Only by being beside myself could I be
away in winter. "Or have other guests." No, indeed, they don't fly like
doves to our winter [320]windows. But the white snowflakes do, and it
will do your eyes good to see the driven and drifted snow. We have had
a very quiet winter, and few drifts, but to-night, I see, is blowing
them up. I should not wonder if they blocked the road and kept my
letter back a day or two.
To the Same.
March 5, 1873.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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