"I cannot resist returning special thanks for your sermon of last Sunday, 'To what end is your life?' I do not know when a sermon has so fully aroused the will of my youth.... At twenty years of age, 'the object of my toil' was to live for the earthly comfort of the family, for the good of society in general, so far as in my power, at the same time keeping an eye to the higher interests of life by working in and for the church.... 'The goal of my ambition' in middle life is to labor for the spiritual welfare of those about me; but I find myself without means to assist others.... My preference is decidedly to labor for the higher natures of others as well as for myself; therefore, remembering your kind offer in your letter to me during the summer, I ask, can you suggest anything for me to engage in, in the spreading of Christianity? [She wishes] to devote the remainder of my life to the highest and best I know. If you can put me in the way of assisting others as well as myself in the highest and holiest way, I shall be ever indebted to you. I shall be glad to so live that when I lay down my life I shall in some measure have returned the many kindnesses of parents, sisters, brothers, and friends, repaid the efforts of teachers and pastors in my behalf, and proved myself a worthy child to Him who gave me being." At the end, however, she writes: "Didn't send it. Concluded it was better to talk with him." The same ideas in another form appear again in the diary as a letter to Mr. Wendte. One of the burdens on Mr. Wendte's heart in those days was "to find something for Miss Ellis to do." Partly to this end he devised Sunday-school lessons in manuscript, which Miss Ellis copied each week for all the teachers. In 1877 he appointed a Missionary Society with a formidable list of names, the significant one among whom events proved to be Miss Sallie Ellis, Treasurer,--she being, indeed, the "society." The little programme says:-- "The object of the Missionary Society is to spread the knowledge and increase the influence of Liberal religious ideas throughout the city and State by publications, correspondence, and such other means as may seem to it suitable and best." During the winter of 1877-78 Miss Ellis, aided by Mr. Wendte, distributed 1,846 tracts and 211 "Pamphlet Missions" (as baby "Unity" was called) in twenty-six States. Miss Ellis was always scrupulously systematic, methodical, and exact in all she did, and a huge pile of closely written blank books gives every minutia connected with the business details of her work. In her diary was a copy of this letter to Mr. Wendte, dated Feb. 21, 1878:--