ey get light, somebody comes along
and snuffs out their candles with unceremonious finger and thumb. A
dearly-beloved woman spent a month with me last spring. She thinks she
is "kept" from sin, and certainly the change from a most estimable
but dogmatic character is absolutely wonderful.... There was this
discrepancy between her experience and mine, with, on all other points,
the most entire harmony. She had had no special, joyful revelations of
Christ to her soul, and I had had them till it seemed as if body and
soul would fly apart. On the other hand she had a sweet sense of freedom
from sin which transcended anything I had ever had consciously; although
I really think that when one is "looking unto Jesus," one is not likely
to fall into much noticeable sin. Talking with Miss S. about the two
experiences of my dear friend and myself, she said that it could be
easily explained by the fact that _all_ the gifts of the Spirit were
rarely, if ever, given to one soul. She is very (properly) reticent as
to what she has herself received, but she behaved in such a beautiful,
Christlike way on a point where we differed, a point of practice, that I
can not doubt she has been unusually blest.

Early in May of this year she was afflicted by the sudden death in Paris
of a very dear friend of her eldest daughter, Miss Virginia S. Osborn.
[3] During the previous summer Miss Osborn had passed several weeks
at Dorset and endeared herself, while there, to all the family. The
following is from a letter of Mrs. Prentiss to the bereaved mother:

I feel much more like sitting down and weeping with you than attempting
to utter words of consolation. Nowhere out of her own home was Virginia
more beloved and admired than in our family; we feel afflicted painfully
at what to our human vision looks like an unmitigated calamity. But if
it is so hard for us to bear, to whom in no sense she belonged, what a
heartrending event this is to you, her mother! What an amazement, what
a mystery. But it will not do to look upon it on this side. We must
not associate anything so unnatural as death with a being so eminently
formed for life. We must look beyond, as soon as our tears will let us,
to the sphere on which she has been honored to enter in her brilliant
youth; to the society of the noblest and the best human beings earth has
ever known; to the fulness of life, the perfection of every gift and
grace, to congenial employment, to the welcome of Him who