Lyman Beecher: The whole year after her death was a year of great emptiness

The whole year after her death was a year of great emptiness, as if there was not motive enough in the world to move me. I used to pray earnestly to God either to take me away, or to restore me to that interest in things and susceptibility to motive I had had before.

         --Lyman Beecher (1775-1863), on the death of his wife Roxanna Foote