ions of a Visit to East
River. A Picture of her by an old Friend. Goes to Dorset. Second Advent
Doctrine. Last Letters.

II.

Little Incidents and Details of her last Days on Earth. Last Visit to
the Woods. Sudden Illness. Last Bible-reading. Last Drive to Hager
Brook. Reminiscence of a last Interview. Closing Scenes. Death. The
Burial.

APPENDIX

CHAPTER I.

THE CHILD AND THE GIRL.

1818-1839.

I. Birth-place and Ancestry. Seth Payson. Edward Payson. His Mother. A
Sketch of his Life and Character. The Fervor of his Piety. Despondent
Moods and their Cause. Bright, natural Traits. How he prayed and
preached. Conversational Gift. Love to Christ. Triumphant Death.

Mrs. Prentiss was fortunate in the place of her birth. She first saw the
light at Portland, Maine. Maine was then a district of Massachusetts,
and Portland was its chief town and seaport, distinguished for beauty of
situation, enterprise, intelligence, social refinement and all the best
qualities of New England character. Not a few of the early settlers had
come from Cape Cod and other parts of the old Bay State, and the blood
of the Pilgrim Fathers ran in their veins. Among its leading citizens at
that time were such men as Stephen Longfellow, Simon Greenleaf, Prentiss
Mellen, Samuel Fessenden, Ichabod Nichols, Edward Payson, and Asa
Cummings; men eminent for private and public virtue, and some of whom
were destined to become still more widely known, by their own growing
influence, or by the genius of their children.

But while favored in the place of her birth, Mrs. Prentiss was more
highly favored still in her parentage. For more than half a century the
name of her father has been a household word among the churches not of
New England only, but throughout the land and even beyond the sea. It is
among the most beloved and honored in the annals of American piety. [1]
He belonged to a very old Puritan stock, and to a family noted during
two centuries for the number of ministers of the Gospel who have sprung
from it. The first in the line of his ancestry in this country was
Edward, who came over in the brig Hopewell, William Burdeck, Master, in
1635-6, and settled in the town of Roxbury. He was a native of Nasing,
Essex Co., England. Among his fellow-passengers in the Hopewell was Mary
Eliot, then a young girl, sister of John Eliot, the illustrious "Apostle
to the Indians." Some years later she became his wife. Their youngest
son, Samuel, w