Please give my love to Martha, and also to Mrs. Stoddard and Sarah, and tell them that our hearts are with them. From your granddaughter, whom you have not seen, RAHEEL. No reader of the Bible needs any description of Oriental mourning for the dead. The rent garments and sackcloth (2 Sam. iii. 31), loud weeping and wailing (ver. 32), protracted lamentation as for Jacob (Gen. 1.10 and 11), and for Moses (Deut. xxxiv. 8), and the hired mourning women (Jer. ix. 17, and Matt. ix. 23), were to be found nowhere in greater perfection than among the Nestorians. It is very difficult for us, in this land, to realize the force of such habits; but it required much grace to break over them; and even now, when the Christian heart grows cold, it is apt to return to the old ways. One day, in 1845, the whole school were going to attend a funeral. When the time came, one of the pupils requested to be excused. "Why? are you sick?" "No." "Why not go, then?" "I do not wish to tell." But another said, "May I tell you alone?" "It will be a great shame if we do not all weep. We all think we can do it but Sarah, and we are afraid her tears will not come; and so, lest she bring reproach upon us, we do not want her to go." The heart of the teacher sunk within her, as she found that she was about to lead a company of mourning women to the funeral. She asked them how they could make themselves weep. "O, when we go to such places, we call to mind all the sad things we ever knew, and so we weep; but if the tears do not come, we leave very quickly." But grace has wrought a great change in this matter also. In the journal of Yonan, we find the following entry: "At the close of afternoon service, I had a Bible class with the women: this was followed by a prayer meeting. Then Munny came to see me: she has buried a little child recently. It is a matter of joy to me, that these women can lift up their eyes and see their children with the dear Saviour, and feel that they have treasures in heaven. I asked her, 'Did you ever do any thing for your little girl that you remember now with gratitude?' 'Many times I carried her with me to the stable, and knelt with her upon the straw in the manger, to ask blessings on her.' 'Christ was in the manger, and perhaps there your daughter was consecrated to him.'" In another place, we find him asking Esli,--the wife of Joseph, of whom he had just said, "Her little daughter has died recently, and her heart is broken,"--"When your child died, did you weep and wail as your people do?" and she answered, "No."