have already
spoken for a very sweet home for you. It will be a great
gratification to see you once again, and to enjoy sweet converse,
with you as of old. Mr. Gervase Smith and I are to be with
relatives just across the road. So please do not delay your coming
for another year, as no one knows to what place the Conference will
be carried. It seems almost improper to talk about it when we
remember the heavy loss into which, as into an inheritance, we have
all come by the death of dear Wiseman. You would, I am sure, be
very grieved to hear of it. It fell on all here like a
thunder-clap. But the Lord is good, and knows what is best for us
all. There is a sorrowfully-occasioned vacancy at the Mission
House, which the friends say I must fill, but I cannot tell how it
will go, and of course, all is premature as yet. The Lord will
direct us as He has always done.

By the way, I have been set seriously thinking by Mr. Wiseman's
removal, whether I had sufficiently secured, by the document I gave
to Rev. Dr. Rice, that the principal of the Testimonial Fund, given
to me on leaving Canada, should, at my death, pass to the Canadian
Conference for the benefit of the worn-out ministers and widows. I
found on enquiry that it was not so secured as to be beyond doubt.
I have been in consultation with my solicitor as to the best method
of effecting this. I have therefore given directions for a deed of
trust to be prepared, which will state that I hold this money in
trust for the "Superannuated Minister's Fund of the Methodist
Church of Canada." I advise you of this as the honoured President
of the General Conference. I was, on the whole, satisfied with the
proceedings of the General Conference. I felt a little pang at the
hasty change of name. It was inevitable to do it, at the same time,
but it showed rather a leaping desire of freedom, and a wish to get
as far as possible from the old mother at once, which might have,
perhaps, been spared. This was not, I dare say, present to all who
desired the change. I admit all the force of your able reasoning
for the present--but twenty years hence the General Conference will
meet as strangers, with no community of interest, and I dread the
result, without a visible bond of cohesion.

Writing to me from Port Rowan in Septem