And here it may not be amiss to say a word as to her state of mind respecting death.  After her release her husband thus described it to a friend: 

Her feeling about dying seemed to me to be almost unique.  In all my pastoral experience, at least, I do not recall another case quite like it.  Her faith in a better world, that is, a heavenly, was quite as strong as her faith in God and in Christ; she regarded it as the true home of the soul; and the tendency of a good deal of modern culture to put this world in its place as man’s highest sphere and end, struck her as a mockery of the holiest instincts at once of humanity and religion.  Death was associated in her mind with the instant realisation of all her sweetest and most precious hopes.  She viewed it as an invitation from the King of Glory to come and be with Him.  During the more than three-and-thirty years of our married life I doubt if there was ever a time when the summons would have found her unwilling to go; rarely, if ever, a time when she would not have welcomed it with great joy.  On putting to her the question, “Would you be ready to go now?” she would answer, “Why, yes,” in a tone of calm assurance, rather of visible delight, which I can never forget.  And during all her later years her answer to such a question would imply a sort of astonishment, that anybody could ask it.  So strong, indeed, was her own feeling about death as a real boon to the Christian, that she was scarcely able, I think, fully to sympathise with those who regarded it with misgiving or terror.  The point may be illustrated, perhaps, by referring to her perfect fearlessness and repose in the midst of the most terrific thunder-storm.  No matter how vivid the lightning’s flashes or how near and loud the claps that followed, they affected her nerves as little as any summer breeze—­scarcely ever awaking her if asleep, or hindering her from going to sleep if awake.  And so it was with regard to the terrors of death.  But not merely was there an absence of all apparent dread of death, but an exulting joy in the thought of it.  There is a passage in The Home at Greylock, which was evidently inspired by her own experience.  It is where old Mary, when her first wild burst of grief was over, said: 

Sure she’s got her wish and died sudden.  She was always ready to go, and now she’s gone.  Often’s the time I’ve heard her talk about dying, and I mind a time when she thought she was going, and there was a light in her eye, and “What d’ye think of that?” says she.  I declare it was just as she looked when she says to me, “Mary, I’m going to be married, and what d’ye think of that?” says she.

This feeling about death is the more noteworthy in her case because of her very deep, poignant sense of sin and of her own unworthiness.

To a Friend, Dorset, July 27, 1873.

This is my third Sunday home from church.  I have been confined to my bed only about a week, but it took me some days to run down to that point, and now it is taking some to run me up again.  I had two or three very suffering days and nights, and the doctor was here nearly all of one day and night, but was very kind, understood my case and managed it admirably.  He is from Manchester and is son of a missionary. [3]