In the work of the kingdom of God on earth the true worker is in point of importance first. Apart from the wise, holy, beneficent soul, even the truth of the Gospel is but a dead letter. It is in the intelligence, loveliness, magnanimity and sweetness of a human spirit, touched finely by His own grace, that the Holy Ghost finds His chief instrumentality. Preparation for a good work is usually begun in early life, and the worker, whose story is to fill the following pages, unconsciously learnt her first lessons for this service in her father's house. There was, indeed, seemingly little to be learned of any rare sort in the quiet village of Campsie, where life passed as peacefully as the clouds sailing along the peaceful heavens. Almost the only break in the even tenor of those days was an occasional sojourn in the house of her uncle, the Rev. Dr. Edwards, a minister of the United Presbyterian Church in Glasgow, where that venerable soldier of the cross still lingers, as if halfway betwixt the Church militant and the Church triumphant But whether in the father's house or in the uncle's manse, kind and truthful speech was the coin current, a good example the domestic stock-in-trade, and an interchange of cheerful, loving service the main business. It was a quiet school, whose very hum was peaceful; and yet the schooling was thorough; things strong often grow as quietly as things feeble. The oak rises as silently in the forest as the lily in the garden. Strong characters, too, under any conditions of life, school themselves much more than they are schooled. Active, inquisitive, resolute, and possessing a fair share of the national _perfervidum ingenium_, not without some tincture of those elements of the Scottish character known as the "canny" and the "dour," our worker early developed that robust vigour of mind and body which has so long stood the wear and tear of severely trying work.