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[1]
BY
PRINTED BY ORDER OF THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE OF THE ELIOT
CITY MISSION SOCIETY.
[2]
[3]
When the Lord removed his servant Moses, there was but one mourner, andthat mourner was all Israel. To-day a whole community is the mourner. Amother—may I not say, the mother—in Israel has been taken from us. Awoman, a whole woman, an aged woman, a thoroughly Christian woman,—oneworthy to have sat with Mary Magdalene and the other Mary "over againstthe sepulchre," to have returned with them, that she might assist inpreparing sweet spices, and, when the Sabbath was past, to have comeback again to the tomb,—is herself to be laid away to-day. We glance ather career and character.
It is of small moment where she was born,—it was in the town ofBiddeford, Maine; of small moment that it was on July 3d, 1792; of smallmoment that she was the youngest of twelve children, none of whom nowsurvive. But it is a point of interest to us, that, when a little pasttwenty years of age, she became by renewing grace a child of God; thatthe chief reason for leaving home, fifty years ago, was a persistentopposition, on the part of friends, to her Christian activity; thatafterwards she left for a time her field of usefulness in this city toattend upon her mother in her last [4]sickness, and then had thesatisfaction of rejoicing over the conversion of that parent at the sameage she has now herself departed this life. Still later, and under thesame circumstances, she performed a similar kind service for her fatherin his closing sickness, and was cheered by the hope of his conversiontoo, when just verging upon fourscore. Being in Biddeford at that timefor ten months, she established a female prayer-meeting, and severalconversions followed. She also, after much opposition, opened a Sabbathschool, having obtained permission to occupy a school-house, but at thesame time being forbidden to use wood belonging to the town. That, itwas supposed, would prevent the attendance of children. But the noblewoman was not to be baffled thus. In her own arms she carried fuel fromher house. Of course the Sabbath school was a success.
She had previously had tempting offers, to the extent even of thehomestead to be secured to her, if she would remain there; butProvidence, as she believed, evidently called her to Christian labors inthis city, and to her mind that was decisive. Pecuniary considerationsmight not divert her from the Master's service here. How far from asinecure was that! While acting indefatigably as matron of a reformatoryinstitutio