With kindest regards, very sincerely,

JULIA H. KEMPSON.

To Mrs. Humphrey, New York, Dec. 1874.

After learning how to manage a “Bible-reading” by attending Miss Warner’s once a week for four or five months, I got my tongue so loosed that I have held one by request at Dorset.  The interest in it did not flag all summer, and ladies, young and old, came from all directions, not only to the readings, but with tears to open their hearts to me.  Some hitherto worldly ones were among the number.  I have also helped to start one at Elizabeth, another at Orange, another at Flushing.  My husband says if one were held in every church in the land the country would be revolutionised.  It is just such work as you would delight in.  Do forgive the blots; I am tearing away on this letter so that I forget myself and dip up too much ink.  I have been urged to hold three readings a week in different parts of the city, but that is not possible.  You can’t imagine how thankful I am that I have at last found a sphere of usefulness in Dorset.

We had a great shock last spring when Mr. Prentiss was stricken down; I do not dare to think how hard it would have been to become husbandless and homeless at one blow.  But I well know that no earthly circumstances need really destroy our happiness in that which is, after all, our Life.  Even if it is only for the few years before our boys leave home, never to return permanently to it, I shall be thankful to have it left as it is—­if that is best.  If I had not known what my husband’s trouble was, and summoned aid in the twinkling of an eye, Dr. Buck says he would have died.  He would certainly have died if he had been at Dorset.  He has never recovered his strength, but is able to give his lectures.  Although I did very little nursing, I got a good deal run down, especially from losing sleep, and have had to go to bed at half-past eight or nine all summer and thus far in the winter.

I am taking lessons this winter in oil-painting with A. She has the advantage of me in having had lessons in drawing, while I have had none.  My teacher says she never had a beginner do better than I, so I think beginners very awkward mortals, who get paint all over their clothes, hands and faces, and who, if they get a pretty picture, know in the secrecy of their guilty consciences it was done by a compassionate artist who would fain persuade one into the fancy that the work was one’s own.

What you say about my having done you good surprises me.  Whatever treasure God has in me is hidden in an earthen vessel and unseen by my own eyes....  I feel every day how much there is to learn, how much to unlearn, and that no genuine experience is to be despised.  Some people roundly berate Christians for want of faith in God’s word, when it is want of faith in their own private interpretation of His word.  I think that when the very best and wisest of mankind get to heaven, they’ll get a standard of holiness that might make them blush; only it is not likely they will blush.