The death of poor Mary has been your first serious sorrow, because you were too young to feel deeply the loss of your parents. Ere this can reach you a sufficient time will have elapsed for the first natural overflowings of sorrow. I would not have restrained them if I could. It is now time that they should moderate, and that you should not mourn the dead at the expense of your duties to the living. This sad event ought to teach you the vanity of all things human and transitory, and cause you to fix your thoughts, desires, and affections on that Being with whom “there is no variableness or shadow of turning.” This will not render you gloomy, but will enable you the better to perform all the duties of life. In all calamitous events we ought to say emphatically: “Thy will be done.” At the last, all the proceedings of a mysterious Providence will be justified in another and a better world, and it is our duty here to submit with humble resignation. Although my course of life has been marked by temporal prosperity, thanks be to Heaven, yet I have experienced heart-rending afflictions, and you must not expect to be exempt from the common lot of humanity. I have not seen Mrs. Shapter, but I sent her Mr. Beale’s letter, which she returned with a most feeling note. She, also, wrote to you by the “Arago.” You will know sooner in the United States than I can at what time I shall be relieved. I shall now expect to hear by the arrival of every steamer that my successor has been appointed. Should he arrive here within a month or six weeks, I still have an idea of running over to the continent; but I have yet determined upon nothing. I have a great desire to be at home. Footnote 25: Mrs. Baker. December 28, 1855. I have received your favor of the 11th instant with the copy of Mr. Baker’s letter, which I have read with deep interest. I wrote to you last week on the subject of poor Mary’s death, which I deeply deplore. I hope that ere this can reach you your mind will have been tranquillized on that sad event. It would have been wrong, it would have been unnatural, had you not experienced anguish for the loss of so good, kind-hearted, and excellent a sister.