trust.  Of my own sorrow I will not now speak; the only thought which afforded me the least consolation was—­that what was my loss, was her eternal gain.  About a year after the death of my mother my husband formed the idea of going to America.  He had little difficulty in gaining my consent to accompany him.  Had my mother still lived the case would have been very different; as it was, I had no remaining tie to bind me to Scotland, and wherever he deemed it for the best to go, I felt willing to accompany him, for he was my all in the wide world.  We left the British shores on the tenth of June, and after a prosperous voyage, we found ourselves safely landed in the city of Boston.  We brought with us money sufficient to secure us from want for a time, and my husband soon began to acquire quite a lucrative practice in his profession, and our prospects for the future seemed bright.  For a long time my spirits were weighed down by home-sickness.  I felt an intense desire to return to the home we had left beyond the sea, but in time this feeling wore away, and I began to feel interested in our new home, which appeared likely to be a permanent one.  When we had resided for a little more than a year in our adopted country, my little Ernest was born, and the lovely babe, with my additional cares, doubly reconciled me to my new home.  When my little boy was about a year old I was attacked by a contagious fever, which at that time prevailed in the city.  By this fever I was brought very near to death.  I was delirious most of the time, and was thereby spared the sorrow of knowing that my child was consigned to the care of strangers.  But the fever at length ran its course, and I began slowly to recover.  But just when I was considered sufficiently strong to be again allowed the care of my child, my husband was prostrated by the same disease from which I had just recovered, and in ten days I was left a widow with my helpless child.  I cannot even now dwell upon this season of sorrow.  All my former trials appeared as nothing when compared with this.  Had it not been for my boy I could almost have wished I had not been spared to see this hour, but I banished such thoughts as wrong and impious, and tried to look the dreary future calmly in the face.  I soon found it necessary to devise some means of support for myself and child.  I thought of many plans only to discard them as useless.  I once thought of opening a school as my own mother had done, but the care of my child prevented me from supporting myself in this way; and I would not consign him to the care of strangers.  I at length decided to seek to support myself by the use of the needle, and accordingly rented two rooms on a respectable street, and removed thither with my child, where, by the closest industry I succeeded in keeping above want for more than three years, when my health failed from too close application to my employment.  My physician strongly advised me to leave the city, as he thought country air would have a beneficial effect