time, to call her, found even fuller occupation for heart and hands.  Her love for children was intense, and she had the rare faculty of being able to bring her intelligence down to theirs.  Angelina’s children were literally as her own, on whom she ever bestowed the tenderest care, and with whose welfare her holiest affections were intertwined.  She often speaks of loving them with “all but a mother’s love,” of having them “enshrined in her heart of hearts,” of “receiving through them the only cordial that could have raised a heart bowed by sorrow and crushing memories.”

In one of her letters she says:  “I live for Theodore and Angelina and the children, those blessed comforters to my poor, sad heart,” and, during an absence from home, she writes to Angelina:—­

“I have enjoyed being with my friends:  still there is a longing, a yearning after my children.  I miss the sight of those dear faces, the sound of those voices that comes like music to my ears.”

In a letter to Sarah Douglass, written towards the close of their residence in Belleville, she says:—–­

“In our precious children my desolate heart found a sweet response to its love.  They have saved me from I know not what of horrible despair, or rushing into some new and untried and unsanctified effort to let off the fire that consumed me.  Crushed, mutilated, torn, they comforted and cheered me, and furnished me with objects of interest which drew me from myself.  I feel that they were the gift of a pitying Father, and that to love and cherish them is my highest manifestation of love to the Giver.”

As the children grew, the parents began to feel the difficulty of educating them properly without other companions, and it was at last decided to take a few children into the family to be instructed with their own.

This was the beginning of another important chapter in their lives.  As educators Mr. and Mrs. Weld very soon developed such rare ability, that although they had thought of limiting the number of pupils to two or three, so many were pressed upon them, with such good reasons for their acceptance, that the two or three became a dozen, and were with difficulty kept at that figure.  In this new life their trials were many, their labor great, and the pecuniary compensation exceedingly moderate; but it is inspiring to read from Sarah the accounts of Theodore’s courage—­“always ready to take the heaviest end of every burden,” and of Angelina’s cheerfulness; and from Angelina the frequent testimony to Sarah’s patience and fidelity.  It took this dear Aunt Sai many years to learn to like teaching, especially as she never had any talent for governing, save by love, and this method was not always appreciated.

With their new and exacting work, the farm, of course, had to be given up, and was finally sold.