“_Evening._—Attended Mr. Magoon’s church. He preached from the words, ‘Be not deceived, God is not mocked,’ etc. A good, practical sermon; he alluded to ministers and church members away from home, and showed them in many cases to be mockers of God, and instanced inconsistencies, all of which he termed ‘mockery.’ Expect to-night to hear Doctor Plumer. Now, love, you have a full history up to the time of our departure. Write to me soon, and, after telling about yourself, the children, and servants, give me an account of store, farming, and gardening operations. Those large sheets will hold a great deal, if written very close. Kiss Alice and the baby for father. Tell Herbert and Horace that father wishes them to be good boys and learn fast. And now, dear Anna, I must bid you adieu, commending you and our dear ones to the care of Him whose mercies have been so largely bestowed on us in days past. May He preserve you from all evil and cause you to dwell in perfect peace.” The foregoing extracts from a letter written by my father during the (to us) “wonderful summer” of our sojourn in Prince Edward had to do with the periodical visit paid by my grandmother to her Massachusetts home. I am deeply impressed in the perusal of these confidential epistles with the absolute dependence of the strong man—whom mere acquaintances rated as reserved to sternness, and singularly undemonstrative, even to his friends—upon the gentle woman who was, I truly believe, the one and only love of his lifetime. He talked to her by tongue and by pen of every detail of business; she was the confidante of every plan, however immature; she, and she alone, fathomed the depths of a soul over which Puritan blood and training impelled him to cast a veil. In all this he had not a secret from her. Portions of the letter which I have omitted go into particulars of transactions that would interest few women. No matter how weary he was after a day of travel or work, he had always time to “talk it out” with his _alter ego_. The term has solemn force, thus applied. In the injunction to write of domestic, gardening, and farming affairs, he brings in “the store,” now of goodly proportions and “departments,” and into which she did not set foot once a week, and then as any other customer might. “Those large sheets will hold a great deal if written very close,” he says, archly. They had evidently been provided for this express purpose before he left home. One paragraph in the exscinded section of the letter belongs to a day and system that have lapsed almost from the memory of the living. An infant of Mary Anne, my mother’s maid, was ill with whooping-cough when the master took his journey northward.