I told you, you will perhaps remember, that you were going to enter the valley of humiliation in which I have dwelt so long, but I trust we are only taking it in our way to the land of Beulah.  And how we “pant to be there”!  What a curious friendship ours has been! and it is one that can never sever—­unless, indeed, we fall away from Christ, which may He in mercy forbid!...  I do pray for you twice every day, and hope you pray for me.  I do long so to know the truth and to enter into it.  Certainly I have got some new light during the last year, in the midst of my trials, both within and without.

To another young friend she writes a few days later: 

I remember when I was, religiously, at your age I was longing for holiness, but my faith staggered at some of the conditions for it.  I had no conception, much as Christ was to me, what He was going to become.  But I wish I could make you a birth-day present of my experience since then, and you could have Him now, instead of learning, as I had to learn Him, in much tribulation.

To Mrs. Condict, Jan. 15, 1873.

I have been meaning, for some days, to write you about the Professorship. [1] It is a new one, and is called “the Skinner and McAlpine” chair, and Mr. Prentiss says there could not be a more agreeable field of usefulness.  It is most likely that he will feel it to be his duty to accept.  As to myself, I am about apathetic on the subject.  My will has been broken over the Master’s knee, if I may use such an expression, by so much suffering, that I look with indifference on such outward changes.  We can be made willing to be burnt alive, if need be.  For four or five years to come I shall not be obliged to leave the church I love so dearly; if the Seminary is moved out to Harlem, it will be different; but it is not worth while to think of that now.  It seems to me that Mr. P. has reached an age when, never being very strong, a change like this may be salutary. February 3d.—­You will be sorry to hear that dear Mrs. C. is quite sick.  Her daughters are all worn out with the care of her.  I was there all day Saturday, but I can do nothing in the way of night watching; nor much at any time.  A very little over-exertion knocks me up this winter.  It is just as much as I can do to keep my head above water....  Sometimes I think that the dreadful experience I have been passing through is God’s way of baptizing me; some have to be baptized with suffering.  Certainly He has been sitting as the Refiner, bringing down my pride, emptying me of this and that, and not leaving me a foot to stand on.  If it all ends in sanctification I don’t care what I suffer.  Though cast down, I am not in despair.