SAMUEL FINLEY B REESE MORSE. 221 



Travelling by stage, lie did not reach New Haven 

 till his wife had been buried a week. A month 

 later he wrote to a friend : " I dare not yet give 

 myself up to the full survey of its desolating 

 effects ; every day brings to my mind a thousand 

 new and fond connections with dear Lucretia, all 

 now ruptured. I feel a dreadful void, a heart-sick- 

 ness, which time does not seem to heal, but rather 

 to aggravate. You know the intensity of the 

 attachment which existed between dear L. and me, 

 never for a moment interrupted by the smallest 

 cloud ; an attachment founded, I trust, in the 

 purest love, and daily strengthening by all the 

 motives which the ties of nature and more 

 especially of religion furnish. 



" I found in dear L. everything that I could wish. 

 Such ardor of affection, so uniform, so unaffected, 

 I never saw nor read of, but in her. My fear with 

 regard to the measure of my affection toward her, 

 was not that I might fail of ' loving her as my own 

 flesh,' but that I should put her in the place of Him 

 who has said, < Thou shalt have no other gods but 

 me.' I felt this to be my greatest danger, and to be 

 saved from this idolatry was often the subject of 

 my earnest prayers. If I had desired anything 

 in my dear L. different from what she was, it would 

 have been that she had been less lovely. My whole 

 soul seemed wrapped up in her ; with her was 

 connected all that I expected of happiness on 

 earth." 



She was but twenty -five, and had shared only the 



