"_August 30._ My dear Lucy: I should indeed rejoice if you were able to be here, for I long for some communion with one who could so enter into all my views and feelings at this time as I know you would. But I bow in submission to all the discipline which God appoints for me.... In some respects the bitterness of the stroke has passed. I felt that the real separation came with the conviction, that that mind with which my spirit had so long communed in the truest sympathy was clouded for the remainder of its sojourn in the body. The sense of solitude, of isolation, I had almost said _desolation_, was for a time nearly overpowering; and there are moments when life looks so like a blank, that it is not easy to restrain the wish to go too. But the necessity of calmness for the children's sake, feeling that their state of mind would inevitably be influenced by the tone I should give it, has aided me in preserving a quiet exterior; and so we have had the great comfort of peace and entire freedom from agitation and excitement. God give us strength to preserve it! But this weary waiting from day to day, alternately hoping and feeling that there is no reason to hope, wears upon the nerves,--the days seem interminable, and the nights ages.... Long as I have looked forward to this change, it seems like a dream from which I must awake,--as if it could not be! No wonder;--for fifteen years, his health, _he_ indeed, has been the first, almost the sole, object of my life. It will be long before I can turn even to my children, with the consciousness that they can now be attended to without neglecting him."