I have a sweet, and intellectual, and generous-hearted daughter, whose rare conversational powers, and vocal and instrumental music, cheered us in other days, who has been chained to a couch of illness more than two years. So disconsolate is her heart, that she will not permit her rosy and curly children to enter her apartment, nor a solitary mortal, save myself and husband. Her stomach rejects every species of food, and she has the piles most awfully, and several other diseases. Doctors Parker and Mott, and other eminent Americans, and two distinguished European physicians, have crossed the Atlantic, and toiled long and hard for her restoration. Now, my dear Mrs. Briggs, please listen very attentively to what I am about to disclose. A week since, I discovered a long article on Worms in the _New York Daily Times_, signed by Stephen H. Branch, and read it to my daughter, to elicit, if possible, a smile from her sad face. But I had scarcely closed it, ere she partially arose in her bed, and fixed her excited eyes upon me, and most terribly alarmed me, as she had not arisen in her bed for months, without assistance, and I said: ‘Why, my dear child, did you arise without my aid, and why, dear Caroline, do you stare so at your mother?’ She waved her hand, and faintly cried: ‘Go on, dear mother, go on, and let me again hear the delightful music of those words. I am saved, mother, I am saved, and Stephen H. Branch is my deliverer. Read, mother, read, and gladden the heart of poor Caroline.’ And I read it again, and she alternately wept and laughed until I closed it, and then she softly laid her head upon her pillow, and crossed her arms on her excited and swelling bosom, and breathed a prayer to God for the preservation of Mr. Branch, until she could behold him. Her words were perfect inspiration, and I cried until my eyes were highly inflamed, and until I almost fell upon the floor, and I dared not cry more, and I had to leave her and call my husband, who came and relieved me. She had not slept without laudanum for months, but in ten minutes after I closed Mr. Branch’s article on Worms, she passed into a gentle and natural slumber, and did not awake until the following day at meridian. And her repose imparted a rainbow glow to her icy cheeks, and exchanged roses for lilies. And she beckoned me to her bedside, and softly said: ‘Mother: I want you to visit Mr. Branch, as I believe I have got worms, and I am sure, from his glowing and truthful Dissertation on this novel theme, that he fully understands my case, which the most eminent physicians have failed to fathom.’ I smiled, and assured her that it would be useless. But for several days she has afforded me no peace, such have been her importunities for me to see Mr. Branch. And as I conceived it very dangerous to oppose her will, in her critical condition, I have come, and I desire you to exert all your influence to induce Mr. Branch to accompany me to my residence in the