That precious packet of Sophia’s letters! Eben sent it down by Dinnock and I found it in the mailbox when I got home. There the letters lay, tied up in red tape, the ink faded, the paper worn and torn, but as I read them aloud to Cornelius, such a person came vividly out to us that it was like bringing the dead to life. We had an extraordinary afternoon, reading, talking, fitting it all together, the huge farmhouse—up this very road, Cornelius thinks—where a group of women under Sophia’s leadership lived and worked together as a community when the men had gone to war. What a novel it would make! The sheer adventure of it makes my heart beat faster. And what a person Sophia was! In spite of the genteel style she comes through as humorous, forthright, opinionated, passionate. I bet she enjoyed having her own way for four years! She pretends to ask Elisha’s advice, but of course she knew very well that by the time his answer reached her she would have made her own decision. At first she has only the vaguest idea where his regiment is—the Seventh New Hampshire. Sometimes several months elapse without news. But in the last year of the war he was wounded and in hospital, and then, at last, she could be sure that comfits—dried apples and cherries—a quilt, warm socks and nightshirts would reach him. Her heart was torn by the decision as to whether to go down and nurse him—as many women did—or to stay in Willard and keep her hand on the plow. It is a moving letter where she tells him how fervently she has prayed for guidance and that she has finally come to believe that she must stay. She was responsible, the moving spirit of a large undertaking.