natural, simple way, and yet with an indescribable
earnestness of look and voice, as if aware that she was uttering her
dying words. I can not recall all that she said, but its substance, and
some of the exact expressions, are indelibly impressed upon my memory.
For my and the children's sake she had been willing and even desired to
live; and for several years had made extraordinary efforts to keep up,
although much of the time the burden of ill-health, as I well knew, had
been well-nigh insupportable. So far as this world was concerned, few
persons in it had such reasons for wishing to live, or so much to render
life attractive. But the feeling in her heart had become overpowering
that no earthly happiness, no interest, no distraction, could any longer
satisfy her, or give her content, away from Christ; and she longed to be
with Him, where He is. During the past three months especially, she had
passed through very unusual exercises of mind with reference to this
subject; and it seemed to her as if she had now reached a point
beyond which she could not go. She evidently had in view the dreadful
_sleeplessness_, to which she had been so in bondage for a quarter of
a century, whose grasp had become more and more relentless, and the
effects of which upon her nervous system were such as words can hardly
describe. No human being but myself had any conception of her suffering,
both physical and mental, from this cause.

To return to her conversation.... In answer to a question which I put to
her later, about her view of heaven and of the relation of the saints in
glory to their old friends there and here, she replied, in substance,
that to her view _heaven is being with Christ and to be with Christ
is heaven_. By this she did not mean, I am sure, to imply any doubt
respecting the immortality of Christian love and friendship, or that
our individual human affections will survive the grave. Often had she
delighted herself in the thought of meeting her sainted father and
mother in heaven, of meeting there Eddy and Bessie and other dear ones
who had gone before; and certain I am, too, she believed that those who
are gone before retain their peculiar interest in those who are toiling
after, only her mind was so absorbed in the thought of the presence and
beatific vision of Christ in His glory that, for the moment, it was lost
to everything else.

She then said that, in the event of her death, she would like to be
buried in Dorset