... Thanks for your kind sympathy for us in our sorrow. Thanks to you for the solid foundation you laid when our dear mother died, which has given me a firm faith in the hour of trial. I firmly believe that "all things work together for good," and that dear C----'s long sickness prepared her family, herself, and all of us for her death. There was much in her sickness and death that was beautiful and comforting. It was pleasant after so many days of suffering to see her at rest; and we feel it must have been a happy release to her too, for her face in death bore no trace of the pain she had endured, of which we were glad, for she looked so natural and sweetly that we could allow her two youngest children to look at "mamma asleep, to wake up an angel in heaven." C---- never wanted her children to have a horror of death, and her desire has been granted. They have no other idea than that the Good Father released their dear mother from pain and she is an angel in heaven. An Episcopalian minister officiated at the funeral, as C---- always preferred that service. He was a personal friend of hers and my brother E----'s. My brother's widow came from ----to attend the funeral, and she requested that I select a piece to be read in case they found no one to lead in a hymn. I selected your hymn,--"A holy air is breathing round." It was read in the middle of the service, very impressively, and was particularly comforting to N----'s widow and myself, as you had officiated at our mother's funeral and had baptized C---- and N----. (Do you remember the day you baptized me and my three brothers and C---- at the Masonic Hall?) The children scattered flowers over the graves; A----, ten years old, said on returning from the cemetery, "Papa, it was all beautiful, no dread or gloom about it. It was just as mamma would have had it." And so it was. The children will always feel the life hereafter a reality. "More homelike is the vast unknown," since their mamma is there. The piece "At noontide," in last week's "Register," applies to dear C----'s death as well as if written for her. It is beautiful. I want it in a leaflet to distribute, as I have opportunity frequently for just such words. Yes! I help on "Unity," the "Register," and "Our Best Words."... Hope I am making Christians, and not merely Liberals or merely Unitarians. Think we are gaining ground with many; but the literature must be distributed with great care, I feel with you.... We are glad to have the Thayers home again, and will probably begin to work earnestly next week. * * * * * JANUARY 4, 1885.