To Mrs. George F. Wright.

Cambridge, Nov. 28, 1865.

A week of busy occupation has passed very rapidly, but makes my recent sad visit to you seem distant. Here in Cambridge, removed from the associations which must constantly at every turn force the grievous reality of our loss upon you, it comes to me as a dream which I can hardly realize; and when I realize it, I feel the additional affliction of the fact that I am not in a position to realize it fully, by being able to make it a part of my special care and daily life. For a sorrow such as ours is worthy not to be put aside by impertinent businesses, but to be ennobled by a life of duties which are consecrated by the sorrow. But this is your own true consolation, to know that you have many things to do which he would have wished you to do, and which you have to do because he can no longer do them, — duties now more sacred than ever to you. The nobility of such duties takes away the pain of loss, and makes life the more worthy, since in a sense he still lives in them.

How much better to feel the lost one’s presence in the work we have to do, than to think of him as removed even to a happy life remote from ours. The life that survives death, so far as the living can comprehend it, is in the feeling that we have gained new motives, new inspirations, new sanctions to carry on another’s life of duty in our own.