“My Darling Sister: 

“I am sitting to-day in our little room—­yours and mine.  I have been taking in the picture of it; every thing about it is dear to me, from our father’s face smiling down on me from the wall, to the little red rocker in which he sat and wrote, in which I sit now, and in which you will doubtless sit, when I have gone to him.  I want to speak to you about that time.  When you read this, I shall have been gone a long, long time, and the bitterness of the parting will all be past; you will be able to read calmly what I am writing.  I will tell you a little of the struggle.  For the first few moments after I knew that I was soon to die, my brain fairly reeled; It seemed to me that I could not.  I had so much to live for, there was so much that I wanted to do; and most of all other things, I wanted to see you a Christian.  I wanted to live for that, to work for it, to undo if I could some of the evil that I knew my miserable life had wrought in your heart.  Then suddenly there came to me the thought that perhaps what my life could not do, my coffin would accomplish—­perhaps that was to be God’s way of calling you to himself perhaps he meant to answer my pleading in that way, to let my grave speak for me, as my crooked, marred, sinful living might never be able to do.  My darling, then I was content; it came to me so suddenly as that almost the certainty that God meant to use me thus, and I love you so, and I long so to see you come to him, that I am more than willing to give up all that this life seemed to have for me, and go away, if by that you would be called to Christ.

“And Sadie, dear, you will know before you read this, how much I had to give up.  You will know very soon all that Dr. Douglass and I looked forward to being to each other—­but I give it up, give him up, more than willingly—­joyfully—­glad that my Father will accept the sacrifice, and make you his child.  Oh, my darling, what a life I have lived before you!  I do not wonder that, looking at me, you have grown into the habit of thinking that there is nothing in religion—­you have looked at me, not at Jesus, and there has been no reflection of his beauty in me, as there should have been, and the result is not strange.  Knowing this, I am the more thankful that God will forgive me, and use me as a means to bring you home at last.  I speak confidently.  I am sure, you see, that it will be; the burden, the fearful burden that I have carried about with me so long, has gone away.  My Redeemer and yours has taken it from me.  I shall see you in heaven.  Father is there, and I am going, oh so fast, and mother will not be long behind, and Alfred and Julia have started on the journey, and you will start.  Oh, I know it—­we shall all be there!  I told my Savior I was willing to do any thing, any thing, so my awful mockery of a Christian life, that I wore so long, might not be the means of your eternal death.  And he has