Her father moved to Chicago in 1851, where he resided three years. There Miss Ellis attended Mr. Shippen's church, taught a Sunday-school class, and had a class of newsboys evenings. After the return to Cincinnati, while Miss Ellis was at the sea-shore, she began to experience a painful roaring in the ears. Hearing, never quite perfect, was soon almost totally gone. The following years are little, to outward sight, but a record of invalidism, of trying this or that doctor, but still ever decreasing health and strength. Many dyspeptics, from Carlyle to lesser folk, have felt their disease, like charity, a cover for a multitude of sins. Miss Ellis suffered from chronic dyspepsia of aggravated type, from catarrhal and other troubles which finally wore away the always frail thread of life in consumptive decline.[1] [Footnote 1: The death of two brothers, of a dear little niece, and of a fondly loved sister,--a woman beloved by all who knew her, who died only about a year before Miss Ellis, leaving five motherless girls--were among the trials of her maturer years.] But through all these hard years Miss Ellis was doing what she could, and longing to do more. Until deafness prevented, she always taught in Sunday school. She was a devoted attendant on all church services, and worker in all church causes. The perfection of her handiwork made it in great demand. Knowing now Miss Ellis's possibilities, one almost grudges the Unitarian children, and the innumerable but beloved little nephews and nieces, the years of "Aunt Sallie's" life that went into dainty embroidery and perfect mittens for their wearing. The church fairs were always liberally aided by her willing hands. Indeed, it is difficult, without seeming exaggeration, to express her passion of devotion to her church. It was literally her life. Outside her family, to which she was warmly attached, everything centred for her there, and for many years one of her heaviest crosses was her inability to render the service she desired to her church and denomination. The portrait prefacing this book was taken in 1871, when Miss Ellis was thirty-six years old,--perhaps the saddest period in her life. Youth, health, fortune, hearing, dear friends, had gone one after another. The future looked dark indeed. She felt within herself capacities for which there seemed no earthly opportunity. The face wears a sadder expression than that characterizing it in later life, when at last she had found her real work.[2] [Footnote 2: The kindness of Mr. Frank R. Ellis, of Cincinnati, Miss Ellis's youngest brother, enables us to place the portrait in this book.] Rev. Charles Noyes was settled as Unitarian pastor in Cincinnati in 1872. To him Miss Ellis always attributed her first missionary impulse. In a letter to Rev. W. C. Gannett, July 28, 1885, she said:--