Thus his years passed quietly onward, filled with fruitful labor even unto the end. In contrast to his often stormy public career, Grundtvig's private life was quite peaceful and commonplace, subject only to the usual trials and sorrows of human existence. During the greater part of his life he was extremely poor, subsisting on a small government pension, the meager returns from his writings and occasional gifts from friends. For his own part this did not trouble him; his wants were few and easily satisfied. But he "liked to see shining faces around him," as he once wrote, and he had discovered that the face of a child could often be brightened by a small gift, which he was frequently too poor to give. "But if we would follow the Lord in these days," he wrote to a friend, "we must evidently be prepared to renounce all things for His sake and cast out all these heathen worries for dross and chaff with which we as Christians often distress ourselves." Grundtvig was thrice married. His first wife, Lise Grundtvig, died January 4, 1851, after a long illness. Her husband said at her grave, "I stand here as an old man who is taking a decided step toward my own grave by burying the bride of my youth and the mother of my children who for more than forty years with unfailing loyalty shared all my joys and sorrows--and mostly latter." But Grundtvig did not appear to be growing old. During the following summer he attended the great meeting of Scandinavian students at Oslo, where he was hailed as the youngest of them all. And on October 4 of the same year, he rejoiced his enemies and grieved many of his friends by marrying Marie Toft, of Rennebeck's Manor, a wealthy widow and his junior by thirty years. And despite dire predictions to the contrary, the marriage was very happy. Marie Toft was a highly intelligent and spiritual-minded woman who wholeheartedly shared her husband's spiritual views and ideals; and her death in 1854 came, therefore, as an almost overwhelming blow. In a letter to a friend a few weeks after her death, Grundtvig writes, "It was wonderful to be loved as unselfishly as Marie loved me. But she belonged wholly to God. He gave and He took; and despite all objections by the world and our own selfish flesh, the believing heart must exclaim, His name be praised. When I consider the greatness of the treasure that the Lord gave to me by opening this loving heart to me in my old age, I confess that it probably would have proved beyond my strength continuously to bear such good days; for had I not already become critical of all that were not like her, and indifferent to all things that were not concerned with her?"