Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. I.djvu/411

Rh less hot!How similar everywhere are human circumstances, how similar are the causes of suffering and of happiness, of joy and of sorrow! Here is it the summer and the sand which is in the way of happiness; elsewhere it is the winter and the granite—everywhere it is sickness!

Charleston, June 2nd.—This Charleston—this “owl's nest,” is nevertheless right pleasant as it now stands, like an immense bouquet of fragrant trees and flowers, and with its kind, amiable people! It has affected me deeply to have been received here as I have been by old and new friends. I have come to love Charleston for the sake of its inhabitants, especially for my two ladies there, Mrs. W. Howland and Mrs. Holbrook. I am now once more in the excellent home of the former, where I have been received as a member of the family.

I arrived here the day before yesterday half suffocated by the heat of the atmosphere, sunshine, smoke and steam, but found here a real Swedish, fresh summer air, which still continues and has greatly refreshed me, to say nothing of all that is good, comfortable, and charming, with which this home abounds. God be thanked for this good home and for every good home on earth! “All good homes!” is my usual toast when I propose one at the American tables.

I found upon my writing-table a bouquet of beautiful flowers from Mrs. Holbrook, and a book which both surprised and pleased me. I little expected in the New World, and least of all in a great city, to meet with a profoundly penetrative, liberal spirit which, like Böklin in Sweden, and H. Martensen in Denmark, places the ground of Christian faith in the highest reason. It is, however, precisely this pure German spirit which I find in the Philosophic Theology, or the first principles of all Religious faith founded in Reason, by the young missionary, James W. Miles; a small book but of great