I suppose that some who have known what my outward life has been during this period would think of me as a mere object of pity. There has certainly been suffering and deprivation enough to justify the sympathy of my dear husband and children and the large circle of friends who have rallied about us. How little we knew we had so many! God has dealt very tenderly with me. I was not stricken down by sudden disease, nor were the things I delighted in all taken away at once. There was a gradual loss of strength and gradual increase of suffering, and it was only by degrees that I was asked to give up the employments in which I'd delighted, my household duties, my visits to the sick and suffering, the society of beloved friends. Perhaps Ernest perceived and felt my deprivations sooner than I did; his sympathy always seemed to out-run my disappointments. When I compare him, as he is now, with what he was when I first knew him I bless God for all the precious lessons He has taught him at my cost. There, is a tenacity and persistence about his love for me that has made these years almost as wearisome to him as they have been to me. As to myself, if I had been told what I was to learn through these protracted sufferings I am afraid I should have shrunk back in terror and so have lost all the sweet lessons God proposed to teach me. As it is He has led me on, step by step, answering my prayers in His own way; and I cannot bear to have a single human being doubt that it has been a perfect way. I love and adore it just as it is. Perhaps the suspense has been one of the most trying features of my case. Just as I have unclasped my hand from my dear Ernest's; just as I have let go my almost frantic hold of my darling children; just as heaven opened before me and I fancied my weariness over and my wanderings done; just then almost every alarming symptom would disappear and life recall me from the threshold of heaven itself. Thus I have been emptied from vessel to vessel, til I have learned that he only is truly happy who has no longer a choice of his own, and lies passive in God's hand. Even now no one can foretell the issue of this sickness. We live a day at a time not knowing what shall be on the morrow. But whether I live or die my happiness is secure and so I believe is of my beloved ones. This is a true picture of our home: A sick-room full of the suffering ravages the body but cannot touch the soul. A worn, wasting mother ministered unto by a devoted husband and by unselfish Christian children. Some of the peace of God if not all of it, shines in every face, is heard in every tone. It is a home that typifies and foreshadows the home that is perfect and eternal.