to
withdraw from the room after a few introductory words, so that she could
speak to them with the familiarity of a mother. I know that all that
group felt the warmth of her interest in them, the charm of her
character which was so refined by her love of Christ and strengthened by
her experience of needed grace, as well as the wisdom of her words.
I was impressed, from so much as I did hear of her remarks, with her
ability to combine rarest beauty and highest spirituality of thought
with the utmost simplicity of language and the plainest illustrations.
Her conversation was like the mystic ladder which was "_set up on the
earth,_ and the top of it _reached to heaven._" Her most solemn counsel
was given in such a way as never to repress the buoyant feeling of the
young, but rather to direct it toward the true "joy of the Lord." She
seemed to regard the cheer of to-day as much of a religious duty as the
hope for to-morrow, and those with whom she conversed partook of her own
peace. I shall always remember these meetings as among the happiest and
most useful associations of my ministry in New York.

* * * * *

II.

The Moody and Sankey Meetings. Her Interest in them. Mr. Moody.
Publication of _Griselda_. Goes to the Centennial. At Dorset again. Her
Bible-reading. A Moody-Meeting Convert. Visit to Montreal. Publication
of _The Home at Greylock_. Her Theory of a happy Home. Marrying for
Love. Her Sympathy with young Mothers. Letters.

The early months of 1876 were very busily spent in painting pictures
for friends, in attendance upon Mr. Moody's memorable services at the
Hippodrome, and in writing a book for young mothers. Before going to
Dorset for the summer she passed a week at Philadelphia, visiting the
Centennial Exhibition. Her letters during the winter and spring of this
year relate chiefly to these topics.

_To a Christian Friend, Feb. 22, 1976._

You gave me a good deal of a chill by your long silence, and I find it a
little hard to be taken up and dropped and then taken up; still, almost
everybody has these fitful ways, and very likely I myself among that
number. Your little boy must take a world of time, and open a new world
of thought and feeling. But don't spoil him; the best child can be made
hateful by mismanagement. I am trying to write a book for mothers and
find it a discouraging work, because I find, on scrutiny, such awfully
radical defects among them. And yet such