49 Forest Street, Hartford, Conn., October 11, 1887.
Dear Brother,--I was delighted to receive your kind letter.
You were my earliest religious teacher; your letters to me while a school-girl in Hartford gave me a high Christian aim and standard which I hope I have never lost.
Not only did they do me good, but also my intimate friends, Georgiana May and Catherine Cogswell, to whom I read them.
The simplicity, warmth, and childlike earnestness of those school days I love to recall.
I am the only one living of that circle of early friends.
Not one of my early schoolmates is living,--and now Henry, younger by a year or two than I, has gone — my husband also.1 I often think, Why am I spared?
Is there yet anything for me to do?
I am thinking with my son Charles's help of writing a review of my life, under the title, “Pebbles from the shores of a past life.”
Charlie told me that he has got all written up to my twelfth or thirteenth year, when I came to be under sister Catherine's care in Hartford.
I am writing daily my remembrances from that time.
You were then, I think, teacher of the Grammar School in Hartford ....
So, my dear brother, let us keep good heart; no evil can befall us. Sin alone is evil, and from that Christ will keep us. Our journey is so short!
I feel about all things now as I do about the things that happen in a hotel, after my trunk is packed to go home.
I may be vexed and annoyed . . . but what of it!
I am going home soon.
Your affectionate sister, Hattie.
