[246] To his Daughter Mary.
BALTIMORE, Nov. 24, 1856.
DEAREST MOLLY,--I must send you a line, though somehow I can't make my
table write yet. I have just been out to walk in the loveliest morning,
and yet my nerves are ajar, and I can't guide my pen. I preached
very hard last evening. I don't know but these people are all crazy,
but they make me feel repaid. The church was full, as I never saw it
before. The lecture Saturday evening was crowded. So I go.
I am reading Dr. Kane's book. Six pages could give all the actual
knowledge it contains; but that fearful conflict of men with the most
terrible powers of nature, and so bravely sustained, makes the story
like tragedy; and I read on and on, the same thing over and over, and
don't skip a page. But Mrs.--has just been in, and sat down and opened
her widowed heart to me, and I see that life itself is often a more
solemn tragedy than voyaging in the Arctic Seas. Nay, I think the
deacon himself, when he accepted that challenge (how oddly it sounds!),
must have felt himself to be in a more tragic strait than "Smith's
Strait," or any other that Kane was in.
Your letters came Saturday evening, and were, by that time, an
indispensable comfort. . . .
This will be with you before the Thanksgiving dinner. Bless it, and you
all, prayeth, giving thanks with and for you,