I have had many letters to write to-day, for to-day our fate is sealed, and we are to go.  But I must say a few words to you before going to bed, for I want to tell you how very glad I am that you have been enabled to take a step [7] which will, I am sure, lead the way to other steps, increase your holiness, your usefulness, and your happiness.  May God bless you in this attempt to honor Him, and open out before you new fields wherein to glorify and please Him.  This has not been a sorrowful day to me.  I hope I am offering to a “patient God a patient heart.”  I do not want to make the worst of the sacrifice He requires, or to fancy I am only to be happy on my own conditions.  He has been most of the time for years “the spring of all my joys, the life of my delights.”  Where He is, I want to be; where He bids me go, I want to go, and to go in courage and faith.  Anything is better than too strong cleaving to this world.  As I was situated in New York, I lacked not a single earthly blessing.  I had a delightful home, freedom from care, and a circle of friends whom I loved with all my heart, and who loved me in a way to satisfy even my rapacity.  Only one thing was wanting to my perfect felicity—­a heart absolutely holy; and was I likely to get that when my earthly cup was so full?  At any rate I am content.  Now and then, as the reality of this coming separation overwhelms me, I feel a spasm of pain at my heart (I don’t suppose we are expected to cease to be human beings or to lose our sensibilities), but if my Lord and Master will go with me, and keeps on making me more and more like Himself, I can be happy anywhere and under any conditions, or be made content not to be happy.  All this is of little consequence in itself, but perhaps it may make me more of a blessing to others, which, next to personal holiness, is the only thing to be sought very earnestly.  As to my relation to you, He who brought you under my wing for a season has something better for you in store. That’s His way. And wherever I am, if it is His will and His Spirit dictates the prayer, I shall pray for you, and that is the best service one soul can render another.

About this time she and her husband had an almost miraculous escape from instant death.  They had been calling upon friends in East Dorset and were returning home.  Not far from that village is a very dangerous railroad crossing; and, as the sight or sound of cars so affrighted Coco as to render him uncontrollable, special pains had been taken not to arrive at the spot while a train was due.  But just as they reached it, an “irregular” train, whose approach was masked behind high bushes, came rushing along unannounced, and had they been only a few seconds later, would have crushed them to atoms.  So severe was the shock and so vivid the sense of a Providential escape, that scarcely a word was spoken during the drive home.  The next morning she gave her husband a very interesting account of the thoughts that, like lightning, flashed upon her mind while feeling herself in the jaws of death.  They related exclusively to her children—­how they would receive the news, and what would become of them. [8]