"I never felt alone. Dream children companioned me, and were as real to my thoughts as if other eyes than my own could have seen them. Their sorrows saddened me, their mirth amused me, they shared my visions, my hopes; and the strange dread with which I—brought up in a Puritan household where election and predestination were familiar words—looked forward to the inevitable end.

"Yet haunted as I was by the phantom future, I was happy in the present. I am afraid I was what is called a spoiled child. I loved horses and I loved verses, and on my eighth birthday two presents were made me—a well-equipped saddle horse, and a book of poems. The horse ran away with me that same afternoon while my too sociable father, who was riding with me, stopped to talk town politics with a neighbor; but my steed raced homeward, and I reached my own door in safety. The book of verse I have yet. It was by Mrs. Hemans—now so cruelly forgotten."

"I was not allowed to read fiction or to play any but the most serious games.... Hence I was thrown upon my own resources for amusement. I remember when I was only eight years old carrying in my head all the summer a sort of Spanish drama, as I called it, though I knew little of Spain except some high-sounding Spanish names which I gave to my characters. Each day, as soon as I could get away by myself, I summoned these characters as if my will had been a sort of invisible call-boy, and then watched them performing. It did not seem to me that I created them, but rather that I summoned them, and their behavior often astonished me. For one of them, a young girl, who obstinately persisted in dying of consumption, I sincerely grieved."

"It was a beautiful September morning that ushered in the day of my departure. I rose with the first dawning of light to gaze once more upon those scenes whose loveliness I had so loved to trace. I rejoiced to pay a tribute of gratitude to some of the many friends whose society had contributed so much to my happiness when away from the home of my childhood.... At noon I started.... For many a mile, as we were drawn with dazzling rapidity by our wild steam horse (whose voice resounded like the rolling of distant thunder), I could catch glimpses of the dark blue waters of the Mohawk, which I had so loved to gaze upon, and to whose music I had so often listened in the hush of evening, from my open window, or when walking on its green banks with a friend, dearly loved and highly prized, but whom I shall, perhaps, meet no more forever.... As I rode along my thoughts reverted to her. The river gleaming in quiet beauty from beneath the green foliage of its fringing trees reminded me of the hours we had spent together in contemplating it. The excitement of travelling and the loved home to which I was hastening were alike forgotten in these reveries of the past."

"From such reveries of the past was I awakened by the stopping of the cars at Albany. That night we embarked on board a steamboat, and as we glided o'er the Hudson river, my heart bounded with delight. I stood alone before an open window, and my soul drank in the richness of the scene."

"... But when they had entirely lost sight of land Charles clasped his loved one to his heart and whispered, 'Be comforted, dearest; we go not alone, for is not He with us who said, "Lo, I am with thee always, even unto the end of the world!"'... The young bride burst into an agony of tears.... Her husband led her on deck, and showed her the sun's last, golden rays that lay upon the waves, sparkling like a thousand brilliants.... It seemed a sea of burning gold.... A high and holy resolve rose in the hearts of the young missionaries.... They had left a circle of brilliant acquaintances for the untutored heathen.... They left the deck to sit down in a quiet nook and read the word of Him for whom they forsook all earthly pleasures."