The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss | Page 8

upon her. Letters to her Sister. Removal to New
York. Reminiscences of the Payson Family.
Elizabeth Payson was born "about three o'clock"--so her father records
it--on Tuesday afternoon, October 26, 1818. She was the fifth of eight
children, two of whom died in infancy. All good influences seem to
have encircled her natal hour. In a letter to his mother, dated October
27, Dr Payson enumerates six special mercies, by which the happy
event had been crowned. One of them was the gratification of the
mother's "wish for a daughter rather than a son." Another was God's
goodness to him in sparing both the mother and the child in spite of his
fear that he should lose them. This fear, strangely enough, was
occasioned by the unusual religious peace and comfort which he had
been enjoying. He had a presentiment that in this way God was
forearming him for some extraordinary trial; and the loss of his wife
seemed to him most likely to be that trial. "God has been so gracious to
me in spiritual things, that I thought He was preparing me for Louisa's
death. Indeed it may be so still, and if so His will be done. Let Him
take all--and if He leaves us Himself we still have all and abound." The
next day he writes:
Still God is kind to us. Louisa and the babe continue as well as we
could desire. Truly, my cup runs over with blessings. I can still scarcely

help thinking that God is preparing me for some severe trial; but if He
will grant me His presence as He does now, no trial can seem severe.
Oh, could I now drop the body, I would stand and cry to all eternity
without being weary: God is holy, God is just, God is good; God is
wise and faithful and true. Either of His perfections alone is sufficient
to furnish matter for an eternal, unwearied song. Could I sing upon
paper I should break forth into singing, for day and night I can do
nothing but sing "Let the saints be joyful," etc., etc. But I must close. I
can not send so much love and thankfulness to my parents as they
deserve. My present happiness, all my happiness I ascribe under God to
them and their prayers.
Surely, a home inspired and ruled by such a spirit was a sweet home to
be born into!
The notices of Elizabeth's childhood depict her as a dark-eyed, delicate
little creature, of sylph-like form, reserved and shy in the presence of
strangers, of a sweet disposition, and very intense in her sympathies.
"Until I was three years old mother says I was a little angel," she once
wrote to a friend. Her constitution was feeble, and she inherited from
her father his high-strung nervous temperament. "I never knew what it
was to feel well," she wrote in 1840. Severe pain in the side, fainting
turns, the sick headache, and other ailments troubled her, more or less,
from infancy. She had an eye wide open to the world about her, and
quick to catch its varying aspects of light and beauty, whether on land
or sea. The ships and wharves not far from her father's house, the
observatory and fort on the hill overlooking Casco Bay, the White
Mountains far away in the distance, Deering's oaks, the rope-walk, and
the ancient burying-ground--these and other familiar objects of "the
dear old town," commemorated by Longfellow in his poem entitled
"My Lost Youth," were indelibly fixed in her memory and followed her
wherever she went, to the end of her days. In her movements she was
light-footed, venturesome to rashness, and at times wild with fun and
frolic. Her whole being was so impressionable that things pleasant and
things painful stamped themselves upon it as with the point of a
diamond. Whatever she did, whatever she felt, she felt and did as for
her life. Allusion has been made to the intensity of her sympathies. The
sight or tale of suffering would set her in a tremor of excitement; and in
her eagerness to give relief she seemed ready for any sacrifice, however

great. This trait arrested the observant eye of her father, and he
expressed to Mrs. Payson his fear lest it might some day prove a real
misfortune to the child. "She will be in danger of marrying a blind man,
or a helpless cripple, out of pure sympathy," he once said.
But by far the strongest of all the impressions of her childhood related
to her father. His presence was to her the happiest spot on earth, and
any special expression of his affection would throw her into an ecstasy
of delight. When he was away she pined for his return. "The children
all send