The bitterest sorrows of my life have come from not having the love of a husband.  I must here say that I have had, at times, in the society of those I love, a foretaste of what this could be.  For years I never saw a loving husband that I did not envy the wife; it was a cry of my heart for love.  I used to ask God why He denied me this.  I can see now why it was.  I know it was God’s will for me to marry Mr. Nation.  Had I married a man I could have loved, God could never have used me.  Phrenologists who have examined my head have said:  “How can you, who are such a lover of home be without one?” The very thing that I was denied caused me to have a desire to secure it to others.  Payne who wrote “Home Sweet Home” never had one.  There is in my life a cause of sadness and bitter sorrow that God only knows.  I shall not write it here.  Oh! how the heart will break almost for a loving word!  I believe the great want of the world is love.  Jesus came to bring love to earth.

During these severe afflictions I began to see how little there was in life.  I wondered at the gaiety of people.  Seemed like a pall hung over the earth.  I would wonder that the birds sung, or the sun would shine.  I might say that for years this was my experience.  I would go to God but got very little relief; yet I never gave up.  It was all the hope I could see for me.  About this time my little Charlien, who had been such a help to me, began to go into a decline, until she was taken down with typhoid fever.  Her case was violent and she was delirious from the first.  This my only child was peculiar.  She was the result of a drunken father and a distracted mother.  The curse of heredity is one of the most heart-breaking results of the saloon.  Poor little children are brought into the world, cursed by disposition and disease, entailed on them.  How can mothers be true to their offspring with a constant dread of the nameless horrors wives are exposed to by being drunkards’ wives.  Men will not raise domestic animals under conditions where the mothers may bring forth weak or deformed offspring.  My precious child seemed to have taken a perfect dislike to Christianity.  This was a great grief to me, and I used to pray to God to save her soul at any cost; I often prayed for bodily affliction on her, if that was what would make her love and serve God.  Anything for her eternal salvation.

Her right cheek was very much swollen, and on examination we found there was an eating sore inside her cheek.  This kept up in spite of all remedies, and at last the whole of her right cheek fell out, leaving the teeth bare.  My friends and boarders were very angry at the physician, saying she was salivated.  From the first something told me this is an answer to your prayer.  At this time, when her life was despaired of, I had an intense longing to save my child, who was so dear to me.  I said:  “Oh, God, let me keep a piece of my child.”  A minister said:  “Don’t pray for the