_November 19._--Received a letter from Mr. Simeon, mentioning Sarah's illness; consumption has seized her, as it did my mother and sister, and will carry her off as it did them, and now I am the only one left. Oh, my dear Corrie, though I know you are well prepared, how does nature bleed at the thought of a beloved sister's drooping and dying! Yet still to see those whom I love go before me, without so much as a doubt of their going to glory, will, I hope, soothe my sorrow. How soon shall I follow? I know it must be soon. The paleness and fatigue I exhibit after every season of preaching show plainly that death is settled in my lungs. _1810, April 9._--From the labours of yesterday, added to constant conversation and disagreement with visitors to-day, I was quite exhausted, and my chest in pain. _April 10._--My lungs still so disordered that I could not meet my men at night. _April 15._ (Sunday.)--Preached to the Dragoons on the parable of the pounds. At the General's on Luke xxii 22. With the native congregation I strained myself greatly in order to be heard, and to this I attribute the injury I did myself to-day. Attempted the usual service with my men at night, but after speaking to them from a passage in Scripture, was obliged to leave them before prayer. _April 16._--Imprudently joined in conversation with some dear Christian friends to-night, and talked a great deal; the pain in the chest in consequence returned. _May 12._--This evening thrown with great violence from my horse: while he was in full gallop, the saddle came off, but I received no other injury but contusion. Thus a gracious Providence preserves me in life. But for His kindness I had been now dragging out a wretched existence in pain, and my blessed work interrupted for years perhaps. Henry Martyn was too absorbed in the higher life at all times to be trusted in riding or driving. Mrs. Sherwood writes: I often went out with him in his gig, when he used to call either for me or Miss Corrie, and whoever went with him went at the peril of their lives. He never looked where he was driving, but went dashing through thick and thin, being always occupied in reading Hindustani by word of mouth, or discussing some text of Scripture. I certainly never expected to have survived a lesson he gave me in his gig, in the midst of the plain at Cawnpore, on the pronunciation of one of the Persian letters.