e sufferings she endured
through her doubts, lest he should have lived long enough to sin, and
had not repented, for, though her dreary creed taught that the rigors
of eternal damnation rested on every one who had not repented of each
individual sin, and that adult baptism was the only assurance of
redemption, it did not teach, nor did she believe, that the innocence
of childhood required the certificate of the church. All the rest of
her children had professed religion and received baptism according
to the rites of the Baptist Church, but little William left in the
mother's heart the sting of uncertainty. Had he lived long enough
to transgress the Law and not repented? was to her an ever-present
question of terrible import. Years rolled by without weakening this
torture of apprehension that this little lamb of all her flock might
be expiating the sin of Adam in the flames of Eternity, a perpetual
babyhood of woe. The depth of the misery this haunting fear inflicted
on her can only be imagined by one who knew the passionate intensity
of her love for her children,--a love which she feared to be sinful,
but could not abate. Finally, one night, as she lay perplexing her
soul with this and other problems of sin and righteousness, she saw,
standing near her bed, her lost child, not as she supposed him to be,
a baby for eternity, but apparently a youth of sixteen, regarding her
silently, but with an expression of such radiant happiness in his face
that the shadow passed from her soul forever. She needed no longer to
be told that he was amongst the blessed. She told me this one day,
timidly, as something she had never dared tell the older children,
lest they should think her superstitious, or, perhaps, dissipate her
consolation by the assurance that she had dreamed. Dream she was
convinced it was not; but only to me, in her old age, had she ever
dared to confide this assurance, which had been so precious to her.

In charity, comfort for the afflicted, help,--not in money, for of
that there was little to spare,--but in food; in watching with the
sick and consoling the bereaved in her own loving, sympathetic
mother's way, she abounded. There was always something for the really
needy, and I remember that one of her most painful experiences came
from having refused food to a begging woman, to whose deathbed she was
called the next day, a deathbed of literal starvation. She recognized
the woman, who had come to our house with a sto