Frankfort August 23 1850
My dear children
I have an opportunity in the morning to send to N. York by a gentleman who is here as delegate to the convention & though it must be a hurried letter I thought I would not suffer the opportunity to pass without so much as saying to you that we are yet in the land of the living & quite far from the place from which we last wrote you, viz. London, if I am not mistaken, about the 12th. If you set as high a value upon a letter from us, as we do from you, you will not grudge a 5 cents postage on as many lines, if they contain the gratifying intelligence of health & prosperity. And as to the first we are about as usual- & for the second we have abundant reason for thankfulness since we have been brought on our way without accident or any very calamitous event & this is testifying abundantly of the goodness of our Heavenly Father in the midst of so many dangers seen & unseen- We have had a great deal of rain since we left London. I think there has not been more than one or two days entirely without during this time- though it has scarcely impeded our travelling. But we have been negligent to a
[We do not forget that it is Charlie’s birth day though I have not mentioned it before in my letter- I hope he is spending it properly & is satisfied with having lived fourteen years in sin-- I will now consecrate himself to God- this is the wish & prayer of his father & mother]
While on tour in Europe in 1850, Orra wrote home to their children about their travels. In this letter from Germany, she described a frustrating incident in Belgium caused by miscommunication, and lamented the fact that they did not speak the languages of the countries they were passing through. She also described the landscape they saw along the Rhine River, and their visit to a cathedral where they attended vespers with the nuns and were able to view Catholic religious relics, a practice far different from the Hitchcocks' Calvinist ways.
Like parents everywhere and at all times, she gently scolded her children for not writing and hoped to hear from them before the European tour was over. She also expressed her birthday wishes to 14-year-old Charlie. She hoped he "is satisfied with having lived fourteen years in sin." (As it turned out, none of the children completely followed their parents' strict Calvinism as adults.) Orra sent the letter off in the care of a man from New York who was also attending the Peace Conference, probably thinking it the safest and speediest way.