"We assembled for praise and prayer. Susan was quite sea-sick, yet she came on deck. The day was cold, and she sat with _a hot potato in each hand to keep her warm_." This is certainly the oddest preparation for approaching the throne of grace that we ever heard of. Mrs. Spring is a prominent figure all through the book, giving her reverend husband advice and comfort, and helping him in the work of the ministry, especially with regard to the women of the flock. He laments in his introductory chapter that the death of his "beloved Mrs. Spring must leave a vacuum in these pages which nothing can fill." In the second volume he gives a long and detailed account of her sufferings in child-bed when she "became the mother of a lovely daughter." When she died in 1860, he wrote in his diary as follows: "I have been her husband and she my wife for four-and-fifty years; our attachment has been mutual, and strong and sweet to the end. I had no friend on earth in whom I had such reliance; no counsellor so wise; no comforter so precious. For the last thirty years we have rarely differed in opinion; when we did, I generally found she was right and I was was wrong; and when I persevered in my {136} judgment she knew how to yield her wishes to mine, and would sometimes say with a smile, 'God has set the man above the woman. You are _king_, my husband; but I am the queen!' In all my ministry, in sickness and in health, at home and abroad, by night and by day, I never knew her own convenience, comfort, or pleasure take the place of my duty to the people of my charge. . . . . I bless God that I had such a wife--that I had her at all, and that I had her so long. . . . My darling wife, I give you joy: but what shall I do without you?" This last question is soon answered in an unexpected manner. Only eight pages further on, Dr. Spring, aged eighty, records the following passage: