so that you can be sure to remember me, when you have any on your heart....  P. S. I have hunted up Mrs. G. and had such an interesting talk with her that she has hardly been out of my mind since.  It is a very unusual case, and the fact that her husband is a Jew, and loves her with such real romance, is an obstacle in her way to Christ.  When you can get a little spare time I wish you would run in and let us talk her case over.  I’m ever so glad that I’m growing old every day, and so becoming better fitted to be the dear and loving friend to young people I want to be.

I wish we both loved our Saviour better, and could do more for Him.  The days in which I do nothing specifically for Him seem such meagre, such lost days.  You seemed to think, the last time I saw you, that you were not so near Him as you were last year.  I think we can’t always know our own state.  It does not follow that a season of severe conflict is a sign of estrangement from God.  Perhaps we are never dearer to Him than when we hate ourselves most, and fancy ourselves intolerable in His sight. Conflict isn’t sin.

To Miss E. A. Warner, New York, October 11, 1869.

I hear with great concern that Miss Lyman’s health is so much worse, that she is about to leave Vassar.  Is this true?  I can not say I should be very sorry if I should hear she was going to be called up higher.  It seems such a blessed thing to finish up one’s work when the Master says we may, and going to be with Him.  I can fully sympathise with the feeling that made Mrs. Graham say, as she closed her daughter’s eyes, “I wish you joy, my darling!” But I should want to see her before she went; that would be next best to seeing her after she got back.  If you meet with a dear little book called “The Melody of the 23d Psalm,” do read it; it is by Miss Anna Warner, and shows great knowledge of, and love for, the Bible.  In a few weeks I shall be able to send you a copy of Stepping Heavenward.

We have been home rather more than a week and the house is all upside down, outwardly and inwardly.  For A. sails for Europe on the 21st with M. and Hal Smith, to be gone a year, and this involves sending the other children to school, and various trying changes of the sort.  Tossing my long sheltered lambs into the world has cost me inexpressible pain; only a mother can understand how much and why; and they, on their part, go into it shrinking and quivering in every nerve.  To their father, as well as to me, this has been a time of sore trial, and we are doing our best to keep each other up amid the discouragements and temptations that confront us.  For each new phase of life brings more or less of both.