It's a long way from the stern Moses Stuart, who believed firmly in
hell and universal damnation and who, with Calvin, depicted infants a
span long crawling on the floor of hell, to his gifted granddaughter,
who, although a member of an evangelical church, wrote: "Death and
heaven could not seem very different to a pagan from what they seem to
me." Her heart was nearly broken by the sudden death of her lover on
the battlefield. "Roy, snatched away in an instant by a dreadful God,
and laid out there in the wet and snow--in the hideous wet and
snow--never to kiss him, never to see him any more." Her _Gates Ajar_
when it appeared was considered by some to be revolutionary and
shocking, if not wicked. Now, we gently smile at her diluted,
sentimental heaven, where all the happy beings have what they most
want; she to meet Roy and find the same dear lover; another to have a
piano; a child to get ginger snaps. I never quite fancied the
restriction of musical instruments in visions of heaven to harps
alone. They at first blister the fingers until they are calloused. The
afflicted washerwoman, whose only daughter had just died, was not in
the least consoled by the assurance that Melinda was perfectly happy,
playing a harp in heaven. "She never was no musicianer, and I'd rather
see her a-settin' by my tub as she used to set when I was a-wringin'
out the clothes from the suds, than to be up there a-harpin'." Very
different, as a matter of fact, were the instruments, more or less
musical, around which New England families gathered on Sunday evenings
for the singing of hymns and "sacred songs." Yet there was often real
faith and sincere devotion pedalled out of the squeaking old melodeon.

Professor Stuart's eldest daughter, Elizabeth Stuart, married Austin
Phelps in 1842; who was then pastor of Pine Street Church in Boston.
Their daughter was born in Boston in 1844, and named Mary Gray Phelps.
They moved to Andover in 1848, where two sons were born. Mrs. Phelps,