s at her mother's
house. This may be illustrated by an extract from a letter of Mr. Hamlin
to a friend of the family in New York, written in April, 1838, while he
was their temporary pastor. Mr. Hamlin has since become known throughout
the Christian world by his remarkable career as a missionary in Turkey,
and as organiser of Robert College. A few months after the letter was
written he set sail for Constantinople, accompanied by his wife, whose
early death was the cause of so much grief among all who knew her. [13]
I should like to write a long letter about dear Elizabeth. I have seen
her more since Louisa left and I love her more. She has a peculiar
charm for me. I think she has a quick and excellent judgment, refined
sensibilities, and an _instinctive_ perception of what is fit and
proper.... It seems to me there is a great deal of purity--of the
_spirituelle_--about her feelings. But I can not tell you exactly what
it is that makes me think so highly of her. It is a nameless something
resulting from her whole self, from her sweet face and mouth, her eye
full of love and soul, her form and motion. I do not think she likes me
much, I have paid so much attention to Louisa and so little to herself.
Yet she is not one of those who _claim_ attention, but rather shrinks
from it. She may have faults of which I have no knowledge. But I am
charmed with everything I have seen of her.

How strange are the chance coincidences of human life! In another letter
to the same friend in New York, in which Mr. Hamlin refers in a similar
manner to Elizabeth, occur these words:

In a few weeks I hope to be in Dorset, among the Green Mountains, where
my thoughts and feelings have their centre above all places on this
earth. I wish you could be present at my wedding there on the third of
September.

How little did he dream, when penning these words, or did his friend
dream while reading them, that, after the lapse of more than forty
years, the "dear Elizabeth" would find her grave near by the old
parsonage in which that wedding was to be celebrated, while the dust of
the lovely daughter of Dorset would be sleeping on the distant shores of
the Bosphorus!

[1] For many years after the publication of his Memoir, it was so often
given to children at their baptism that at one time those who bore it,
in and out of New England, were to be numbered by hundreds, if not
thousands. "I once saw the deaths of _three_ little Edward Paysons in
one p