stantly sought for ways of
showing her love to Christ, especially to His sick and suffering and
sorrowing ones. Life with her was peculiarly intense and earnest; she
looked upon it more as a discipline and a hard path, and yet no one had
a quicker or more admiring eye for the flowers by the wayside. I always
thought that her great _forte_ was the study of character. She laid bare
and dissected everybody, even her nearest friends and herself, to find
what was in them; and what she found, reproduced in her books, was what
gave them their peculiar charm of reality. The growth of the religious
life in the heart was the one most interesting subject to her.

I never could fully understand the deep sadness which was the groundwork
of her nature. It certainly did not prevent the most intense enjoyment
of her rich temporal and spiritual blessings, while it indicated
depths which her friends did not fathom. It was partly constitutional,
doubtless, and partly, I suppose, from her keener sensitiveness, her
larger grasp, her stronger convictions, her more vivid vision, and more
ardent desires. Even the glowing, almost seraphic love of Christ which
was the chief characteristic of her later life was, in her words, "but
longing and seeking." She was an exile yearning for her home, "stepping
heavenward," and knowing better than the rest of us what it meant.

These things come to me now, and yet how much I have omitted--her
industry so varied and untiring, her generosity (so many gifts of former
days are around me now), her interest in my children, her delight in
flowers and colors and all beautiful things, her ready sympathy--but it
is an almost inexhaustible subject. She comes vividly before me now,
seated on the floor in her room, with her work around her, making
something for such and such a person. What the void in your life must
be those who knew most of her manifold, exalted, inspiring life can but
imagine.

"Nay, Hope may whisper with the dead
By bending forward where they are;
But Memory, with a backward tread,
Communes with them afar!

"The joys we lose are but forecast,
And we shall find them all once more;
We look behind us for the past,
But, lo! 'tis all before!"

[1] See _Memoir of S. S. Prentiss_, edited by his Brother, and published
by Charles Scribner's Sons. New Edition. 1879.

[2] The following is part of the notice in the London Daily News:

"We are, unfortunately, ignorant of _Little Susy'