reciation of your book. He said if he were not so poor, he would
buy a whole edition of the "Little Preacher" to give to his friends.

During the autumn of this year her sister-in-law, Mrs. Edward Payson,
died after a lingering, painful illness. The following letter, dated
October 28, was written to her shortly before her departure:

I have been so engrossed with sympathy for Edward and your children,
that I have but just begun to realise that you are about entering on a
state of felicity which ought, for the time, to make me forget them.
Dear Nelly, _I congratulate you with all my heart._ Do not let the
thought of what those who love you must suffer in your loss, diminish
the peace and joy with which God now calls you to think only of Himself
and the home He has prepared for you. Try to leave them to His kind,
tender care. He loves them better than you do; He can be to them more
than you have been; He will hear your prayers and all the prayers
offered for them, and as one whom his mother comforteth, so will He
comfort them. We, who shall be left here without you, can not conceive
the joys on which you are to enter, but we know enough to go with you to
the very gates of the city, longing to enter in with you to go no more
out. All your tears will soon be wiped away; you will see the King in
His beauty; you will see Christ your Redeemer and realise all He is and
all He has done for you; and how many saints whom you have loved on
earth will be standing ready to seize you by the hand and welcome you
among them! As I think of these things my soul is in haste to be gone;
I long to be set free from sin and self and to go to the fellowship
of those who have done with them forever, and are perfect and entire,
wanting nothing. Dear Nelly, I pray that you may have as easy a journey
homeward as your Father's love and compassion can make for you; but
these sufferings at the worst can not last long, and they are only the
messengers sent to loosen your last tie on earth, and conduct you to the
sweetest rest. But I dare not write more lest I weary your poor worn
frame with words. May the very God of peace be with you every moment,
even unto the end, and keep your heart and mind stayed upon Him!

Mrs. Payson had been an intimate friend of her childhood, and was
endeared to her by uncommon loveliness and excellence of character. The
bereaved husband, with his little boy, passed a portion of the ensuing
winter at the parsonage in New Yo