Her sister says: "Our dear mother's death was the turning-point in Sallie's life. She was so shrinking, sensitive, and tender by nature, no one could fully understand her but a mother who had watched the hidden beauties of her character expand from infancy to girlhood." The mother's memory was fondly cherished, her loss deeply mourned, all Miss Ellis's life. Over the dying bed of the worn and weary woman of fifty smiled down the radiant face of the mother, painted when a young, blooming girl. Among Miss Ellis's papers was found a manuscript volume of eighty-one pages of selections, copied in her clear, firm handwriting, index of the spirit's strength. It is headed, "Crumbs of Comfort for the Afflicted." The selections are from the Bible, sermons, hymns, and poems,--all breathing of religious trust and help in grief,--a beautiful and touching collection. The first page reads,-- "Begun in Nov. 1870. "These selections are made in memory of my dear mother, who was called away many years since, and through whose death I was led to think of a higher life,--the _true_ life of the soul. "'Oh, I believe there is no _away_; that no love, no life, goes ever from us; it goes as He went, that it may come again, deeper and closer and surer, and be with us always, even unto the end of the world' (_Patience Strong's Outings_)." One of the selections is an anonymous poem, "The Strength of the Lonely." On one page Miss Ellis had written (signed "S. E."), "I can but believe that God allows a mother still to watch over and care for her family when he takes her from this world, and in our affliction that he draws us to himself, and to Jesus as our guide to him, through her spiritual influence, just as, while upon earth, he permitted her to be his instrument to lead and guide us in all that is good. All children too, even the youngest, are God's instruments for good, and their ministries cease not with their earthly life. The departed are with us everywhere, through our daily duties,-- "In the loneliest hour, in the crowd, they are nigh us." A year or two after the mother's death Sallie joined the Unitarian Church, being baptized by Rev. A. A. Livermore, of whom she writes in a letter: "Rev. A. A. Livermore was settled here from the time I was fourteen to twenty-one, and he formed my religious character." Fitting indeed was it that he who has trained so many young men for the ministry should dedicate to God's service this young woman, also destined to be his minister to many souls. An old lady in the church remembers seeing Sallie go up to be baptized, leading a little brother by each hand, all the little children being baptized at the same time. To one of her nature, the vows then taken were a most sacred, real consecration of her whole self to God,--vows to be nobly fulfilled in the life. Mr. Livermore writes of her:--