We come now to an important change in her outward life.  She had accepted an invitation to become a teacher in Mr. Persico’s school at Richmond, Virginia.  Mr. Persico was an Italian, a brother of the sculptor of that name, a number of whose works are seen at Washington.  He early became interested in our institutions, and as soon as he was able, came to this country and settled in Philadelphia as an artist.  He married a lady of that city, and afterward on account of her health went to Richmond, where he opened a boarding and day school for girls.  There were four separate departments, one of which was under the sole care of Miss Payson.  Her letters to her family, written at this time, have all been lost, but a full record of the larger portion of her Richmond life is preserved in letters to her cousin, Mr. Shipman.  The following extracts from these letters show with what zeal she devoted herself to her new calling and how absorbed her heart was still in the things of God.  They also throw light upon some marked features of her character.

BOSTON, September 23.

I had, after leaving home, an attack of that terrible pain, of which I have told you, and believed myself very near death.  It became a serious question whether, if God should so please, I could feel willing to die there alone, for I was among entire strangers.  I never enjoyed more of His presence than that night when, sick and sad and full of pain, I felt it sweet to put myself in His hands to be disposed of in His own way.

The attack referred to in this letter resembled angina pectoris, a disease to which for many years she was led to consider herself liable.  Whatever it may have been, its effect was excruciating.  “Mother was telling me the other day,” she wrote to a friend, “that in her long life she had never seen an individual suffer more severe bodily pain than she had often tried to relieve in me.  I remember scores of such hours of real agony.”  In the present instance the attack was doubtless brought on, in part at least, by mental agitation.  “No words,” she wrote a few months later, “can describe the anguish of my mind the night I left home; it seemed to me that all the agony I had ever passed through was condensed into a small space, and I certainly believe that I should die, if left to a higher degree of such pain.”

RICHMOND, September 30, 1840.

About twelve o’clock, when it was as dark as pitch, we were all ordered to prepare for a short walk.  In single file then out we went.  It seems that a bridge had been burned lately, and so we were all to go round on foot to another train of cars.  There were dozens of bright, crackling bonfires lighted at short intervals all along, and as we wound down narrow, steep and rocky pathways, then up steps which had been rudely cut out in the side of the elevated ground, and as far as we could see before us could watch the long line of moving figures in all varieties of form and color, my spirits