At the end of 1838 we find Mary very happy, in gratitude for the past and cheerful hopes of the future, with sober but not sad thoughts of the recent sorrow.
"... O that blessed thing, Faith,--faith in the truth of friendship! Among other changes, I have not yet grown old enough to lose my youthful faith in those I love; and between you and me, I begin to suspect that I never shall. I certainly do not find myself, at forty, one whit nearer misanthropy than I was at sixteen. Is this symptomatic of folly at the very core? Or is it only the effect of my superior good luck in life? Whatever it may be, I bless God for it, for I find in it too much happiness to be willing to regret it, even if it be a weakness.
"_January 9._ Just so far had I got, when I found my eyes so dim and my head so giddy that I was compelled to go to bed. And there have I been most of the time since, quite sick with one of my old attacks upon the lungs, which threatened to keep me there the rest of the winter, if it did not end in lung fever, so obstinate and violent was my cough.... I have been living in the past very much lately, from having many of Harriet's letters to read. Some of them, written in Exeter, have brought before my mind people of whom I had not thought for years; and circumstances having intimate connection with events in which I was immediately interested at the time, have unfolded a long and beautiful page of life before me, which I seldom have opportunity to recall. O that Past! what stores of wisdom and happiness are not laid up in it! Why should it be that the busy bustle of the Present hides it so much from our sight? Should we not, by an effort, give ourselves more to its retrospection, that we may profit more by its teaching?...
"But here we are, dear N., at the end of another year, certainly not growing younger, yet I think not at all losing our capacity for enjoying. So far from it, I am surprised to find, that, while with regard to some things my happiness becomes more and more every day a sober certainty, it does not in the least diminish my susceptibility of enjoyment from any new source that chances to present itself from day to day. In fact, it is a much more agreeable thing to grow old than I expected to find it. This is not strange, you may say, in my case, whose blessings increase with every year. Truly it is so, and I never felt it more than at this present. Never since I was married could I look back upon a year of such freedom from sickness in my own family; never was my husband so well for the same length of time in his preaching life; and if I had no more to be grateful for than my precious baby, who has been nothing but a comfort ever since she was born, that is enough for one year. One sad blight has passed over us, and it has indeed solemnized our hearts, and made us feel, as we never felt before, by how slight a tenure we hold all earthly blessings. But these afflictions serve to make us more grateful for those blessings which cannot be taken away.