Goshen is reached by stage, a common country mail stage only, of the cheapest pattern, running up from Litchfield, several miles north. Litchfield itself being four or five miles from the station on the Naugatuck Railroad, and reached only over a heavy and steep road, at points almost perpendicular to the horizon, and withal a dangerous ride, if the stage-horses are not kept perfectly in hand. I did not know of this road, and the jolting character of the stages from the station to Litchfield, and from Litchfield on to Goshen, or all the alluring words of my brother's letters might not have seduced me into acceptance, finally, of his invitation. But I went up to Goshen, and once there, in the society of my brother, and some genial citizens to whom he presented me, passed four or five days of my stolen vacation most pleasantly. The supposed widow--and who proved to be one in fact--had, at the time I arrived in Goshen, ceased to be talked about so generally as before, had won everybody's respect and kindness, and had taught the villagers one good lesson--the value of little, rather than great curiosity, about others and their business, by her impenetrable silence upon those matters about which they had no right to know anything. In her daily promenades with her little bouncing girl, of about five years of age, she passed by the house where I stopped, and one day, when my brother and I were taking the air along the public street, we met her. My brother--who knew her, but not well enough to arrest her in her walk, and present me--bowed to her, and on her turning up her face to respond to his salute, I felt that I had never seen such chastened beauty before. There was a slight evidence of a present, or the mark of a former grief or suffering in that rich face, which only seemed, however, to add to its beauty, or rather the soul-beauty which beamed through it. I felt as if I would almost be glad if that woman were to suffer some dire calamity, if I could only have the privilege of relieving her from it. Years before, I had heard the late Dr. Ives, formerly Episcopal Bishop of North Carolina, but who had then become a Roman Catholic, lecture one night in the old Tabernacle, on Broadway, New York. His discourse touched upon charity. He said, among other things, in substance, that God made some people miserable in order that others might cultivate the sweet grace of charity in their own hearts, by administering to their sufferings! I thought it a monstrous doctrine, and felt like throwing a book, which I chanced to have with me, at the doctor's head. But when I found myself imagining misery for that sweet woman, in order that I might abate it, the doctor's discourse came back to memory with a new meaning; and, in fact, I don't know but I could have seen a horse run over her, breaking an arm, _if_ I could have been on the spot in time to so far save her as to prevent a probable imminent death.