“Thou art, dearest, my best beloved, and often does my heart expand with gratitude to the Giver of all good for the gift of such a friend, who has been the helper of my joy and the lifter up of my hands when they were ready to hang down in hopeless despair.  Often do I look back to those days of conflict and suffering through which I passed last winter, when thou alone seemed to know of the deep baptisms wherewith I was baptized, and to be qualified to speak the words of encouragement and reproof which I believe were blessed to my poor soul.

“I received another long letter from thee this afternoon.  I cannot tell thee what a consolation thy letters are to her who feels like an exile, a stranger in the place of her nativity, ’as unknown, and yet well known,’ and one of the very least where she was once among the greatest.”

In one of her letters, written soon after her return home, she thus speaks of her Quaker dress:—­

“I thought I should find it so trying to dress like a Quaker here; but it has been made so easy that if it is a cross I do not feel the weight of it....  It appears to me that at present I am to be little and unknown, and that the most that is required of me is that I bear a decided testimony against dress.  I am literally as a wonder unto many, but though I am as a gazing-stock—­perhaps a laughing-stock—­in the midst of them, yet I scarcely feel it, so sensible am I of the presence and approbation of Him for whose sake I count it a high privilege to endure scorn and derision.  I begin to feel that it is a solemn thing even to dress like a Quaker, as by so doing I profess a belief in the purest principles of the Bible, and warrant the expectation in others that my life will exhibit to all around those principles drawn out in living characters.”

There is a pride of conscience in all this, strongly contrasting with Sarah’s want of self-confidence when travelling the same path.  If Angelina suffered for her religion, no one suspected it, and for this very reason she was enabled to exert a stronger influence upon those about her than Sarah ever could have done.  She herself saw the great points of difference between them, and frequently alluded to them.  On one page of her diary she writes:—­

“I have been reading dear sister’s diary the last two days, and find she has suffered great conflict of mind, particularly about her call to the ministry, and I am led to look at the contrast between our feelings on the subject.  I clearly saw winter before last that my having been appointed to this work was the great reason why I was called out of the Presbyterian Society, but I don’t think my will has ever rebelled against it.