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Dear Powers

You will not doubt that we heartily sympathise in your affliction for the loss of a child so full of intellectual promise, and who must have been doubly endeared to you as also a child of suffering. We have always remembered her with interest from our first observation of her infant talent, and that interest was increased by all that we have known and heard of her in later years. I suppose you have for years not expected that she would enjoy length of days or confirmed health, but no considerations, of this sort, I -------------------------------- Page -------------------------------- am well aware, can much mitigate the sorrow of parents for the early death of a child, nor, besides the consolations of religion, is relief to be expected from anything but time, which softens, though it can never heal, an affliction which can be estimated and understood only by those who know by experience how hard a burden it is to bear.

You believe in the providence of God, and I suppose you have attained to that belief, as I have, not but argument or by submission to the authority of others, but by observing the overruling of that Providence in the events of your own life. I find and am fully persuaded that my history has been guided by a wiser than I. You have the same experience, no -------------------------------- Page -------------------------------- doubt, but neither you nor I can see why, while we have been spared and prospered, our children, who ought by the course of nature to have closed our eyes, have suffered and been removed to another world. We must have faith that the Being who, we know, has done all things well for us, has done the best also for them, hard as it is to understand how pain and sickness and death can be best for those who have not brought these things upon themselves by folly or by sin, & who are called upon to leave the world before they have had time to enjoy its pleasures, to profit by its lessons, or to be led astray by its temptations.

Your desire to return to your native land and to carry the bones of your dead with you must be -------------------------------- Page -------------------------------- much lessened by the events of the last few years, & I too feel as if I had no longer a country. The losses and wounds we could bear, but the demoralisation implied in the indulgence with which this rebellion has been treated by the people under the inspiration of a government whose members are not virtuous enough to detest crime in others seems to me a voluntary renunciation of every thing which made me proud of the name of American.

Meade, I think, is a second McClellan. Perhaps Halleck held him back, but as yet it appears that his own treachery or pusillanimity alone prevented him from crushing Lee on his retreat.

You are quite right about the photograph. Mrs. M. only asked it because her friends are constantly begging it. Take your own time for the -------------------------------- Page --------------------------------[The following appears at the top of the page beginning "Turin Aug 7 1863"] bust, & we shall be entirely satisfied

With kindest regards to Mrs Powers & well as yourself I am yours truly

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