not even help one another, and
the effect on Ann's health was such that, as the only means of saving her
life, she was sent off at once to England, while her husband remained at
his post quite alone, for Colman had died a martyr to the climate.

She was warmly welcomed by the Missionary Societies in London and
Edinburgh, and thence returned to America, where her mother and sisters
were still living to hail her return. Her narratives, backed by her
natural sweetness, eloquence and beauty, had a great effect in stirring
up the mission spirit among both her countrymen and countrywomen, and
there was no lack of recruits willing to return with her and share her
toil.

The account of Colman's devotion and death had had an especial effect
upon a young girl named Sarah Hall, of Salem, Massachusetts, one of those
natures that seem peculiarly gifted with poetic enthusiasm, yet able to
stand the brunt of the severest test of practice. She was the daughter
of one of those old-fashioned New England families, where a considerable
amount of prosperity and a good deal of mental culture is compatible with
much personal homely exertion. As the eldest of thirteen, Sarah had to
work hard, but all the time she kept a prim little journal, recording, at
an age when one is surprised to see her able to write at all, that her
mother is too busy to let her go to school, and she must improve herself
at home; and this she really did, for her notes, as she grew older, speak
of studying Butler's Analogy, Paley's Evidences, logic, geometry, and
Latin. Her library of poetry is said to have consisted only of Thomson's
Castle of Indolence, and Macpherson's Ossian; but hymns must have filled
her ear with the ring of rhyme, for she was continually versifying,
sometimes passages of Scripture, sometimes Ossian, long before she was
halfway through her teens. Very foolish, sing-song, emotional specimens
they are, but notable as showing the bent of nature that forms itself
into heroism. Her family were Baptists, and she was sixteen when the
sense of religion came on her so strongly as to lead her to seek baptism.
Remarkably enough, the thought of the ignorance of the heathen, and the
desire to teach them, began to haunt her from that time, and is recorded
in the last page of her childish journal, dated a month later than her
baptism.

In fact, her zeal seems to have been pretty strong towards the persons
around her. While staying at a friend's house, s