We may come a little nearer yet to an understanding of Roxana Foote’s character if we take a quotation from one of her letters written to Dr. Beecher before their marriage. Old-time love-letters were of a more serious kind than those of to-day. When the prevailing thought of a time dwelt upon religious questions it was but natural that the spiritual condition of the one beloved should be of the deepest concern to the lover. With such a thought we may read this passage which is given as a light upon the inner impulses and character of Harriet’s mother. Roxana’s lover had, it seems, asked her certain perplexing questions as to her religious experience. In answer she said: “You ask, when I feel a degree of joy, whether it arises from anything I perceive in the character of God that charms me, or from anything that I perceive in myself that I think will charm God? I think the former.... In contemplating the character of God, His mercy and goodness are most present to my mind, and as it were swallow up His other attributes. The overflowing goodness that has created multitudes of human beings that He might communicate to them a part of His happiness, and which openeth His hand and filleth all things with plenteousness, I can contemplate with delight.... I can not now describe what have been my feelings before, but on Sunday night I experienced emotions which I can find no language to describe. I seemed carried to Heaven and thought that neither height nor depth nor things present, nor things to come, should be able to separate me from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus. Yet, if I feel a degree of joy, I fear to indulge it and tremble at every emotion of pleasure. Last night I was almost in Heaven, but sunk to earth again by fears that I should rejoice without cause, but when I prayed my fears seemed to remove.”[2] When we read such a love-letter as this we can a little understand how every son of that mother should become a notable minister of the Gospel and each daughter a source of wide influence for good.