I have lived on, doing the little I could, during these last few years. I have gained in health, and am always hoping to return to some steady work; but it may not be best to do so at all. I like my freedom, and if I can afford to keep it, I shall. I am sure it is not good for me to live in a school. I sometimes wish I had earned or inherited money enough not to have to think of the future, but doubtless the Lord knows just what I need. It is not best for us all to have life made easy for us, in that way. As I look back on my life, I see much reason for humility. I ought to have done so much more and so much better. Nevertheless the future is bright, for God is good. Sometimes it seems to me as if I were just learning what His forgiveness means, what it is to begin every day anew, as if there had been no unworthy past, as if there were only His love and my desire to please Him left. But I only meant to write a line. I go from here to spend the “hay-fever” season among the mountains very soon. Always and truly yours, LUCY LARCOM. The change in Miss Larcom’s religious life came when she began to attend the services of Trinity Church, Boston, in 1879. The preaching of Phillips Brooks was the realization, in living words, of her own thought. He gave utterance for her to all her broader and freer conceptions of Christianity. She had known little of the Episcopal Church before going to Trinity, and she had the same inherited prejudices that many, bred like her, have, though she remembered with pleasure St. Ann’s in Lowell, during her days of wage earning; but the simplicity of the worship at Trinity, and the earnestness of the preacher, touched the deepest chords in her life, and she realized that she could be helped by them. Writing to one of her friends, who urged upon her the claims of the Episcopal Church, she said:-- ... I have been very much interested in the services at Trinity Church. Just think! two prayer-books came to me in one week! one from a friend in New York, from whom I had not heard for a year. I do not know what special suggestion I am to get from the fact, except that I am to know more of the Episcopal Church. Truly I am ashamed of my ignorance regarding it. I enjoy the services, but I think I still strongly prefer Congregational ways. If only there were a little more sharing of the worship on the part of the people! I don’t like to think that the minister is doing it all up for me; but that is the way of one, and not of the other, decidedly. I am going to be able to worship with Episcopalians as intelligently as with others.... At another time she wrote about her church connections as follows:--