,
Unmeasured by the flight of years;
And all that life is love.

While a proper and very natural sentiment demands that the memoirs of
the beloved ones should not appear until some time has passed away, it
is also proper that their publication should not be put off till all
trace of the facts recorded and the impressions there from made have
been forgotten. During the preparation of these memoirs nothing has
been more clearly manifest to me than the steady recurrence, throughout
their lives, of a deep and earnest unison of feeling between man and
wife, in such unfailing sweetness as to find its way at once to our
hearts and clothe it with the freshness of a living, loving presence.

The subjects whose earthly career we are about to delineate, were
whole-souled enough to elicit the respect of all who knew them, hence
they made lasting friends, whilst to their own immediate family their
loss is irreparable, and it is hard to realize that they are no more;
for who is there among us who does not know what it is to be united by
a fond and passionate affection to those who are no longer with
us--ever to think of the beloved ones, and to feel ourselves constantly
under the influence of the vanished presence?

It cannot be claimed for James Knowles that he was a great man, a
learned scholar, or one possessed of extraordinary intellectual culture
above his fellows, but, as Hamerton says: "It is not erudition that
makes the intellectual man, but a sort of virtue which delights in
vigorous and beautiful thinking, just as moral virtue delights in
vigorous and beautiful conduct." So it was with our brother, he made the
most of the talents God endowed him with, and whatever he undertook to
do, he did with might and main; hence his success in any undertaking, or
any cause he espoused, for he seemed to realize that success in a _good_
cause is undoubtedly better than failure, while the result in any case
is not to be regarded so much as the aim and effort, and the striving
with which worthy objects are pursued. Although the Elder may have been
less than a Huss, a Calvin, or a Knox in public fame, he had emulated
them in self-contemplation and humility.

As for Matilda Knowles, our missionary, she was more than a Dorcas, and
equally vigorous in spirit with a Lydia; hence we speak of her in the
sphere in which it pleased God for her to labor. Those who will
carefully read the chapters devoted to her work, will at once perce