handed me by a person, saying he was sorry to inform me of the death of the child.  I know not whether this was a mistake on his part, or kindly intended to prepare my mind for the real intelligence.  I went to my room, and opened the letter with a feeling of gratitude and joy, that at any rate the mother was spared.  It began thus:  ’My dear Sir,—­To one who has suffered so much and with such exemplary fortitude, there needs but little preface to tell a tale of distress.  It were cruel indeed to torture you with doubt and suspense.  To sum up the unhappy tidings in a few words—­Mrs. Judson is no more.’  At intervals,” continues Mr. Judson, “I got through the dreadful letter and proceed to give you the substance, as indelibly engraven on my heart.”  After adding that her disease was a violent fever, which baffled the skill of the physicians and after eighteen days carried her to the grave, he continues:  “You perceive I have no account whatever of the state of her mind in view of death and eternity, or of her wishes concerning her darling babe, whom she loved most intensely.  I will not trouble you, my dear mother, with an account of my own private feelings—­the bitter, heart-rending anguish, which for some days would not admit of mitigation, and the comfort which the Gospel subsequently afforded, the Gospel of Jesus Christ which brings life and immortality to light.”

After his return to Amherst, Mr. Judson writes:  “Amid the desolation that death has made, I take up my pen to address once more the mother of my beloved Ann.  I am sitting in the house she built—­in the room where she breathed her last—­and at a window from which I see the tree that stands at the head of her grave....  Mr. and Mrs. Wade are living in the house, having arrived here about a month after Ann’s death, and Mrs. W. has taken charge of my poor motherless Maria....  When I arrived Mr. Wade met me at the landing-place, and as I passed on to the house, one and another of the native Christians came out, and when they saw me they began to weep.  At length we reached the house; and I almost expected to see my love coming out to meet me as usual, but no, I only saw in the arms of Mrs. Wade, a poor puny child, who could not recognize her father, and from whose infant mind had long been erased all recollection of the mother who loved her so much.  She turned away from me in alarm, and I, obliged to seek comfort elsewhere, found my way to the grave, but who ever obtained comfort there?  Thence I went to the house in which I left her; and looked at the spot where last we knelt in prayer, and where we exchanged the parting kiss....