s in different parts of our dear native
land have greatly refreshed our hearts, and we are ready to exclaim,
surely the millennium has dawned for happy America. Perhaps you think
such intelligence makes me wish to return. But no, my dear brothers and
sisters, it makes me feel just the reverse. I do most ardently long to
labor in this dark land till the day dawns upon us, ... rather I should
say till the Sun of Righteousness reaches the _meridian_ of Burmah, for
the day has already dawned, and the eastern Karen mountains, enveloped
for ages past in midnight gloom, are rejoicing in his bright beams.

"Our schools are very flourishing.... We have sixty scholars in town,
and about fifty among the Karens in the jungles. I feel desolate,
lonely, and sometimes deeply distressed at my great and irreparable
loss,--but I bless God I am not in despair. My darling George is in good
health, and is a source of much comfort, though of deep anxiety to me.
He is learning to read, but is not so forward as children at home. How
it comforts my heart to be able to ask you to pray for him!"

In a hurried postscript she adds: "There are more than eighty Karens at
our house, upwards of twenty of them applicants for baptism."

In another letter: "Death now seems nearer to me, and Heaven dearer than
before I was afflicted; ... my afflictions are precisely the kind my
soul needed.... I receive from my dear friends the Masons, every
possible kindness. But alas! the hours of loneliness and bitter weeping
I endure, are known only to God. But still Jesus has sweetened the cup,
and I would not that it should have passed my lip."

Three courses of life were now open to Mrs. Boardman. Either to devote
herself to her domestic duties, manage her household, educate her
darling boy, and in quiet seclusion pass the weary days of her
widowhood; or--looking abroad on the spiritual wants of the people
around her, knowing that if one devoted laborer was gone there was the
more need of activity in those that remained,--she might continue to
employ her time and faculties in instructing and elevating those in
whose service her husband had worn out his life; or, thirdly, she might
take her child, her "only one," and return to the land of her birth,
where she still had dear parents, brothers and sisters, who would
welcome her with open arms, and where she could give her son those
advantages which he never could have in a heathen land. To adopt either
the first or