Letter from Theodore Parker, Cambridge, [Massachusetts], to Abby Hopper Gibbons, 1855 Dec[ember] 17

Parker, Theodore, 1810-1860 · December 17, 1855

Theodore Parker writes to Abby Hopper Gibbons in regards to the death of her son, William. He writes, "But as sailors who suffer shipwreck only reach another harbor, not the one marked in their chart, but the invisible; so your beautiful minded son graduates to higher than all college honors, proceeding not Bachelor of Arts, but at once Master of Immortal Life. If it be our so tender loss that he is advanced thus suddenly, it is his gain of Everlasting Honors. We must weep and long lament when such an expectation of earthly harvest is laid to the ground, but the fact that he was so much to lose is the great secret of consolation in such a case."