just as
she looked when she says to me, "Mary, I'm going to be married, and what
d'ye think of that?" says she.

This feeling about death is the more noteworthy in her case because of
her very deep, poignant sense of sin and of her own unworthiness.

_To a Friend, Dorset, July 27, 1873._

This is my third Sunday home from church. I have been confined to my bed
only about a week, but it took me some days to run down to that point,
and now it is taking some to run me up again. I had two or three very
suffering days and nights, and the doctor was here nearly all of one
day and night, but was very kind, understood my case and managed it
admirably. He is from Manchester and is son of a missionary. [3]

You speak in your letter of being oppressed by the heat, and wearied by
visitors, and say that prayer is little more than uttering the name of
Jesus. I have asked myself a great many times this summer how much that
means.

"All I can utter sometimes is Thy name!"

This line expresses my state for a good while. Of course getting out
of one house into another and coming up here, all in the space of one
month, was a great tax on time and strength, and all my regular habits
_had_ to be broken up. Then before the ram was put in I over-exerted
myself, unconsciously, carrying too heavy pails of water to my
flower-beds, and so broke down. For some hours the end looked very near,
but I do not know whether it was stupidity or faith that made me so
content to go. I am afraid that a good deal of what passes for the one
is really the other. Fortunately for us, our faith does not entitle us
to heaven any more than our stupidity shuts us out of it; when we get
there it will be through Him who loved us. But if I may judge by the
experience of this little illness, our hearts are not so tied to or in
love with this world as we fear. We make the most of it as long as we
_must_ stay in it; but the under-current bears _home_.

The following extract from a letter to a young relative, dated Sept.
23d, furnishes at once a key to several marked traits of her character
and a practical comment upon her own hymn, "More love to Thee, O
Christ!"

I had no right to leave my friend undefended. I prayed to do it aright.
If I did not I am not ashamed to say I am sorry for it, and ask you to
forgive me. And if I were twice as old as I am, and you twice as young,
I would do it. I will not tolerate anything wrong in myself. I hate, I
hate sin against