"I had a sweet, happy home, for I had the faculty to make it so; I had ten beautiful children but death robbed me of several. We gave the surviving ones a liberal education with accomplishments; as they grew up they repaid us in being all we desired. From a child I had been accustomed to write much--keeping a journal and a book for choice extracts, etc. My father was unavoidably much away from home on business, but he enjoined me to write frequently to him, and to do _his_ bidding was my delight, for he was my _beau ideal_ of all that was good. Since at nine or ten I became a letter writer, and the thousands I have written in my long life would form a towering paper pillar. After some years of my married life I became a writer for the local papers and also wrote two books, one for my girls and the other for the boys, 'The Toilet' and the 'Three Eras,' dedicating them to each. These books were patronized by the aristocracy of England. I also wrote considerable poetry all my life. "In 1849, 'a change came o'er the spirit of my dream.' I had a young woman who had worked for me eleven years as dressmaker, she was highly respectable, conscientious and good. In September, 1849, she was in the house at work, and on the evening of the 4th, when work was laid aside, she told me she wished to speak to me privately, as she had something she wished to communicate to me. I at once gave her the audience she requested and she then laid before me the organization of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, with the first principles of the same. Of course I was startled! But the spirit of God witnessed to my spirit that she spoke _truth_! I compared all she told me by the Bible which had ever been my standard of truth--it _endorsed_ all she said! I studied, I prayed,--she gave me to read 'Spencer's Letters'--they made me a willing convert. I read many other prominent works with which my teacher furnished me. Fifteen months passed, and yet I had not attended the Latter-Day Saint Meetings, or seen a single member, but this young woman, yet even at that time I was a confirmed Latter-Day Saint. I then was introduced to an elder from America, and after his first sermon I was baptized by him in the classic waters of the Camm, my native river.