get her own sufferings, in anxiety for her absent sister."

It has already been mentioned that her affection for her only sister was exceedingly ardent, and seemed to have some mixture of a mother's tenderness. The last letter that she ever wrote was to her. It was dated from Boston, a short time before she was taken sick. It expressed her delighted anticipation of returning home, and the pleasure she promised herself from playing again to her sister on their favorite piano. It closes with the simply affectionate precept, "Be a good little girl."

The impression made on the mind of the Rev. Dr. Stone by his intercourse with her during her illness, is thus narrated by his own pen.

"My acquaintance with Margaret enables me to bear testimony to the striking fidelity of the accounts given of her by others. Well do I remember the feelings with which my first, and subsequent visits to her, inspired my mind. I was at once convinced that I had before me no ordinary character, with regard either to

natural endowments or attainments in religion. Through the dim and silent light which pervaded her apartment, I could easily trace among her pale and emaciated features, a countenance strongly intellectual, and an expression of calm, resigned, and heavenly patience, mingled still with tokenings of an inward emotion plainly of a somewhat painful nature. The cause of this was soon developed in our conversation. It was a sense of her sinfulness in the sight of a pure and holy God, and an intense anxiety to know what she should do to be saved.' Yes, a child whose natural character I knew had from infancy been one of peculiar loveliness, to whose mind I had never as yet had an opportunity of addressing a single consideration from the truths of the Bible, lay before me in all the calm consciousness of an unimpaired intellect of no secondary order, under a solemnly impressed sense of sinfulness in the sight of God, and a deeply excited desire to know how she might be reconciled to him. These things, too clearly for the admission of a doubt in my mind, came from no other source than the inward revealings of the Spirit of

God, applying the religious instructions of her earlier childhood, and showing her that lovely as the natural character may be in its relations to kindred character here, there is still in the loveliest, a deep-seated alienation of the heart from God, a want of affiliated confidence in, and love of a heavenly Father, a consequent need of reconciliation to him, and of preparedness, by renewing and sanctifying grace, for the society of his holy and heavenly family. I therefore proceeded to open to her understanding the gospel way of salvation, of pardon through faith in the atonement of Christ, and of the 'new birth unto righteousness' through the influences of the Holy Spirit. Her deeply attentive and solemn listenings to these instructions were truly impressive; and after commending her in prayer to God, her Father, Saviour, Sanctifier, I took my leave, persuaded that I had been enjoying the high and blessed privilege of ministering to one who was soon to become one of the youthful 'heirs of salvation.'

"This persuasion was delightfully confirmed at my next interview with her, when almost

her first question was, 'How may I know, sir, that I have been born again? As I proceeded to lay before her the various marks of a truly renewed mind, I remember well with what ready promptness and with what serious emphasis she answered the following question: 'Suppose, dear Margaret, the choice were to be given you either to die now with your present views, hopes, and feelings, or to regain your health, and grow up a thoughtless and vain, though amiable child of a fashionable world, which would you choose?' With scarce a moment for consideration, yet as though her whole soul were going up to God in the decision, she replied, 'Let me die now.'

"At my next interview with her, the slightly painful expression of her countenance was gone; a sweet peace with God had spread itself in visible utterance over her speaking features; she expressed it to me in words, and I felt that my own spirit could hold communion with hers in a foretaste of that peace which, passing all understanding here, shall hereafter be both fully comprehended and eternal. Throughout my subsequent pastoral inter

course with her, the Christian character unfolded itself in just and beautiful proportions, leaving no reasonable doubt that it was rapidly becoming as rare a demonstration of the renewing grace of God in the mind of childhood, as her natural character was of that heavenly skill which had given it such exquisite moulding and tempering."

The lovely object of so much affectionate solicitude still continued the victim of disease. Her father came on, and watched day and night by the side of his child. The fever at length seemed to yield. But her constitution was exhausted, and symptoms of consumption appeared. A violent and fatal cough seized her, which no skill could cure. Every effort to save her was made by the most eminent physicians. Dr. Jackson advised that her removal to Hartford should be attempted. A bed was placed in the carriage, on which the wasted and gentle invalid was laid, and being favored with fine autumnal weather, the journey was performed, by easy stages, in the course of a few days. She sustained its fatigue bet