her physical
condition, and who testified, in _The Congregationalist_, that no
medicine, or physician's aid or advice, was of any avail:

"From the first of my acquaintance to the last, she had an unswerving
confidence in her recovery. Many times has she said to me: 'I believe
that I shall be well. Jesus will raise me up. I shall hear you preach
some day.'

"But, in common with the friends who were watching her case, and with
the physicians who had exhausted their skill upon her in vain, I had
little or no hope for her. It seemed to me that her life was to be one
of suffering; that God was keeping her with us that we might have a
heroic example of what His grace could enable one to bear and to become.

"A few days ago, I received from her lips the following statement of the
origin and progress of her sickness: 'My first sickness occurred when I
was about sixteen years old. This illness lasted for a year. Indeed, I
was never well again. That sickness left me with a bad humor, which, for
two years, kept me covered with boils. When the boils disappeared, the
trouble was internal. Physicians feared a cancer. For ten years, I was
sick, more or less--sometimes able to work, sometimes utterly prostrate.

"'My second severe illness began in the Autumn of 1871. I had been
failing for two years. Then I was obliged to give up. I was on the bed
five months. From this illness I never recovered so as to labor or walk
abroad. When not confined to my bed, I have been on the lounge, as you
have known me. No one can ever know the suffering which these years have
brought me.'

"My acquaintance with her began in the Spring of 1873. Several times
since I have known her, she has been carried so low that we have thought
her release near at hand; and, indeed, the general tendency has been
downwards. I recently asked an intelligent physician, who had attended
her for a year or more, to give me the facts in her case. He replied:
'She is diseased throughout. Her system is thoroughly soured. It
responds to nothing. Almost every function is abnormal. There is no help
for her in medicine.' Other physicians had tried their skill with the
same result. It was generally admitted by doctors, friends and family,
that nothing more could be done for her. While all saw only suffering
and an early death in store for her, yet she confidently expected to be
well, and her faith never waned.

"It was her custom to spend a few weeks each year in the family o