“’The first impression I have of home was when I was about five years old, and was surrounded by a little troop of brothers and sisters, for I can remember when there was seven healthy, happy children in my “boyhood’s home.”  We lived at Feltham, Middlesex, in the pretty parsonage-house.  It was situated at the end of a long avenue of elm-trees whose arching boughs, meeting over our heads, sheltered us from the mid-day glare.  Here in the winter we used to trundle our hoops; and in the summer stroll about to gather bright berries from the hedges to make chains for the adornment of our bowers.  But death came to our happy home, and made sad the hearts of our good parents:  the whooping-cough was very prevalent in the village, and a child of one of the villagers, who occasionally came to my father for relief, brought the contagion amongst us, and in a short time we were all seized with it.  Two sisters died in one day, and the morning they were laid in the grave, sweet baby breathed his last.  Then my mother fell sick, and she was very ill indeed; my brother and I were placed in a cot by her bedside, and when pain has prevented me sleeping, I have been comforted by hearing this dear, kind mother beseeching God to spare her boys.  She seemed regardless of her own sufferings, and only repined when she thought how useful she might have been to us, had she too not been laid on a bed of sickness.  But fever and delirium came on, and we were removed from her chamber.  The next day poor Frank died, and was buried by the side of Clara and Lucy.  The funeral service was read by my dear father, who was enabled to stand under all these trials of his faith, for God sustained him; and, having trained us up in the fear and admonition of the Lord, he did not grieve as one without hope, when his darlings were taken from him, for he knew they were gone to a better world, and were happy in the bosom of their heavenly Father.  His greatest trial was the illness of my mother; but before we were all quite well, she was able to leave her chamber, and once again kneel with us at our family altar, to return thanks to God for his many mercies.  There were only three of her seven children left to her, and when my father blessed God that they were not rendered childless, my mother’s feelings overpowered her, and she was borne fainting from the room.

“’But I fear I am tiring you with these melancholy accounts, madam.  You know not how deeply I enjoy the recollection of those days, for through this wilderness of sorrow there was a narrow stream of happiness placidly gliding, to which we could turn amidst the troubles of the world, and refresh our fainting souls; and, though we grieved at the remembrance of the loved ones now gone from us, yet we would not have recalled them to these scenes of woe, to share future troubles with us.  Oh no! my dear father was a faithful follower of Christ; he used to show us so many causes for thankfulness in our late afflictions, which he said were “blessings in disguise,” that happiness and tranquillity were soon restored to our home.