least who prays for your spiritual advance every day.  I hope you pray thus for me.  Friendship that does not do that is not worth the name. April 17th.—­Of course, I’ll take the will for the deed and consider myself covered with “orange blossoms,” like a babe in the wood.  And it is equally of course that I was married with lots of them among my lovely auburn locks, and wore a veil in point lace twenty feet long.

I have had several titles given me in Dorset—­among others, a “child of nature”—­and last night I was shown a letter in which (I hope it is not wicked to quote it in such a connexion) I am styled “a Princess in Christ’s Kingdom.”  Can you cap this climax?

* * * * *

II.

Goes to Dorset.  Christian Example.  At Work among her Flowers.  Dangerous
Illness.  Her Feeling about Dying.  Death an “Invitation” from Christ. 
“The Under-current bears Home.”  “More Love, More love!” A Trait of
Character.  Special Mercies.  What makes a sweet Home.  Letters.

Early in June, accompanied by the three younger children, she went to Dorset.  This change always put her into a glow of pleasurable emotion.  Once out of the city, she was like a bird let loose from its cage.  In a letter to her husband, dated “Somewhere on the road, five o’clock P.M.,” she wrote:  “M. is laughing at me because, Paddy-like, I proposed informing you in a P. S. that we had reached Dorset; as if the fact of mailing a letter there could not prove it.  So I will take her advice and close this now.  I feel that our cup of mercies is running over.  We ought to be ever so good!  And I am ever so loving!” “We are all as gay as larks,” she wrote a few days later; and in spite of heat, drought, over-work and sickness, she continued in this mood most of the summer.  But while “gay as a lark,” she was also grave and thoughtful.  Her delight in nature seemed only to increase her interest in divine things and her longing to be like Christ.  In a letter to one of her young friends, having spoken of prayer as “the greatest favor one friend can render another,” she adds: 

But perhaps I may put one beyond it—­Christian example.  I ought to be so saintly, so consecrated, that you could not be with me and not catch the very spirit of heaven; never get a letter from me that did not quicken your steps in the divine life.  But while I believe the principle of love to Christ is entrenched in the depths of my soul, the emotion of love is hot always in that full play I want it to be.  No doubt He judges us by the principle He sees to exist in us, but we can’t help judging ourselves, in spite of ourselves, by our feelings.  At church this morning my mind kept wandering to and fro; I thought of you about twenty times; thought about my flowers; thought of 501 other things; and then got up and sang

  “I love Thy kingdom, Lord,”