Miss Ellis's MissionSmith, Mary P. Wells (Mary Prudence Wells)
Religion
Miss Ellis's Mission
Smith, Mary P. Wells (Mary Prudence Wells)
Ellis, Sarah, 1835-1885; Home missions -- United States -- Unitarian Church
"The papers do come regularly, to my great joy. I assure you that
the pleasure and spiritual strength I get from them, if you could
realize it, would compensate you for the trouble an hundred-fold. My
business, showing me so plainly the small foibles and weaknesses of
human nature, and necessarily binding one's thoughts in large
measure to 'band, gusset, and seam, seam, gusset, and band,' or
their equivalents of flounces and gores, tends to a wearisome
narrowing of the mind; a half-hour spent after work is done, with
the 'Register,' opens a window, as it were, into heaven.
"I live alone. At times my isolation is hard to bear; but having
seen better days, as the saying goes, to me my deprivations are but
part of the discipline that God saw was needful for me. I am shut
off, by reason of serving the public, from the society of my equals
in education and breeding, and for that of my equals in station I
have no taste. _Pardonnez-moi_ these personal details; I give them
that you may know how much good you are doing. Long may you be
spared the power and the will to do such kindness to those who need.
We may never meet on earth, but I trust we shall in heaven."
To Miss Ellis, Aug. 20, 1885, she wrote:--
"I receive the papers, and not only read and enjoy them, but give
and send them to others. I am surprised to find 'unconscious'
Unitarians wherever I go. I hope you may be well by this time. Do
not tire yourself to write. Others need you more than I."
After Miss Ellis's death, she wrote acknowledging the memorial:--
"Many thanks. I was so glad to receive it, and prize it as one of
my treasures; also for the welcome tracts and papers. They are like
the shadow of a great rock in a weary land to me, and are given
away to others."
A woman in a small Indiana village wrote Miss Ellis:--
"I understand you have Liberal literature that you send gratis to
hungry people who are not able to gratify their appetite in that
direction. It would be greatly appreciated by me, and after reading
I would put it where I thought it would do the most good."
Later, she wrote:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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