"The pleasure and gratitude I feel in the confidence I now have that I am writing to an inhabitant of this world, you can scarcely imagine. The dread I felt about your fate weighed upon me so heavily, in spite of all the reasoning and hope about which I sedulously employed myself, that it was a great effort to write; and I fear our letters of late have not served to animate you. I shall not enter upon the long history of my anxiety, which was inwardly greater than any body's, I believe, because I knew more about it. I will only tell you, that a question about you was sure to damp the best spirits I could be in; and if people I visited undertook to talk about you, it was a signal for my call to terminate. At one time, I determined not to go to town till I heard from you, but was induced to alter my plans, and did go and pass a month, doing all I could to be at ease, and acting just as if I knew you were _safe_;--how you want to scold me for using that word! as if you could be any thing but safe in the hands of your God, and when you were serving him to the utmost of your power.... On Monday night, the 13th of this month, M----, E---- B----, and I found our way to Milton Hill in the 'evening coach.' The next day, that most valued of couriers, the milkman, brought us a bundle from Pearl Street; two letters fell out on opening it,--one from Exeter, the other from the Sandwich Isles,--a long one from B----, which I employed all the daylight in reading. Would you believe me so insatiable, when one such blessing as hearing from that distant spot of earth had been allowed? I was not yet satisfied, although we had left town but the day before; presentiment drove me to the pile of clean clothes on the floor, when my hand made its way through the chaos to a letter! Mother says it was the sense of feeling that discovered it to be yours, for the room was quite dark. I needed but half a glimmer of fire-light to show me the characters I had so longed and prayed to see once more. I screeched, 'Mary Pickard!' and flew to the kitchen fire to assure myself still farther; and never, dearest Mary, did I feel a warmer flood of joy and gratitude than when 'Penrith, 8th December,' convinced me you were alive and well, and in just the hands you ought to be! And when I came to know, too, that my fears had not been unfounded, that you had so narrowly escaped, had passed through such trying scenes, and done more, much more, than almost any body ever did before, I was too happy! Though you don't tell me so, I know under such circumstances what efforts you made. But you have earned the privilege of being an instrument, in the hands of the All-powerful, of good to every human being you come in contact with.