Pure Order's heavenly stream that o'er him flows.
So thou, my friend, hast risen through thought supreme
To central insight of eternal law.
Thy golden-cadenced intuitions gleam
From that new heaven which John of Patmos saw;
And I my spirit lowly bend to thine,
In recognition of thy words divine.

From Salem she writes to Elizabeth, her summer jaunt being over:--

"I have not touched a pencil since I came home. I cannot be grateful
enough that I can be hands and feet to the dearest mother in the
world, who has all my life been all things to me, so delicate as I
have been. There is pastime, pleasure, and a touch of the infinitely
beautiful to me in what is generally considered drudgery; and I find
there is nothing so inconsiderable in life that the moving of the
spirit of love over it does not commute it into essential beauty."




CHAPTER III

THE EARLY DAYS OF THE MARRIAGE


Just before her marriage, on July 9, 1842, and her residence in the
Old Manse, Sophia wrote to Mrs. Caleb Foote, of Salem:--

July 5.