was dear to me haunted my
sleeping and waking dreams. I would have lived for you, and can die
breathing a blessing for your future.

There is one other that I have cared for as a mother would the babe
she carried in her bosom. My patient, tender-eyed Ruth--watch over
her when I am gone. Sometimes, when thinking of this hour, I have
prayed that its bitterness might be averted. Realizing the agony of
parting, the cruel severing of the clinging tendrils of unselfish
affection, I have shrunk from the trial. But now I feel that my
strength is sufficient, even unto the end. Though I walk through
the "valley of the shadow of death," I do not fear, for I can
behold the light that breaks beyond, "over the delectable
mountains."

My own Love! Strive to meet me there. Others have gone before--the
fond eyes that watched over my cradle, the mother who nursed me
during the hours of helpless infancy, and he who sheltered and
protected my early youth with tenderest care. I shall know and love
them again. The thought makes me happy.

I have one last request to make. During my years of loneliness,
when I have met with so much to dishearten and discourage me in my
efforts to earn an honest livelihood, I have learned to pity the
struggling, self-supporting ones of my sex, as only those can pity
and sympathize who have suffered from a similar cause. I have often
wished that I had means to provide a home, not for "fallen women,"
but for those patient toilers who are breasting the cruel,
overwhelming waves of adversity. There are many such, thrown from
loving homes upon the charities of a cold and selfish world. It is
my desire to benefit them, and, with this end in view, I would
leave the money which has so lately come to me, to be expended in
the erection of a home to shelter helpless and unprotected women,
who are incapable of self-support, either wholly or in part.

This is no school-girl fancy, but a plan long matured, formed from
experience and observation. It is a sorrowful fact, that has come
within my own knowledge, that more than one delicately-reared girl,
having an innate love of virtue and horror of vice, has fallen into
infamy from this cause. They have resorted to crime from a total
inability to sustain themselves in even the humblest manner, or