Up to her sixteenth year she seems to have had but few convictions of sin. The great subject of the soul's salvation, if presented at all, made slight impression upon her mind and heart. The warnings and invitations of the gospel were alike unheeded, and she lived until this period in sinful thoughtlessness. In 1820 she found hope in the Savior, and on the 4th of June made a public profession of religion, and in the presence of a great congregation gave herself away to God and to his people. The solemn, awful step she fully realized; and when she was led down into her baptismal sepulchre, and buried there, her heart was fully given up to God. The venerable and departed Dr. Bolles administered the ordinance, and received her by the impressive rite of "fellowship" to the First Baptist Church in Salem, of which he was then pastor. At that time the missionary spirit was beginning to pervade the churches of America and exert its holy influence upon the minds of the members. Young Sarah Hall caught the holy enthusiasm. Just converted, fresh from the public vows of consecration, the anxious question, "Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" upon her lips, she was in the exact frame of mind best adapted to be moulded by holy zeal for a dying race. The feelings which struggled in her soul found utterance through the columns of the Christian Watchman in various prose and poetic effusions. These articles do not exhibit any extraordinary poetic merit. They hardly do credit to her real abilities. Bearing the marks of haste, these early productions never gave any peculiar pleasure to the authoress; but for deep feeling and pathos they are remarkable. They seem to be the outgushings of a soul stirred up with holy enthusiasm and flowing out in channels of its own formation. She evidently wrote, not for the severity of the critic, but for the warm heart of the Christian; not to awaken feelings of admiration, but to kindle up the flame of divine animation; not to win fame for herself, but to inspire others with love for the perishing. One of these poems was the instrument in bringing her into an acquaintance with George D. Boardman, her future husband. The poem was upon the death of Coleman, whose fall in a distant land, ere he had buckled the armor on, produced feelings of sadness in the hearts of all American Christians. Boardman saw it, and his soul was moved by it. Who the writer was he did not know, but determined to discover, if possible, what heart kept time with the wild beatings of his own. The first verse of that poem runs as follows:--