records of preaching, travelling, teaching and
baptisms, would lead one to suppose that he was in the enjoyment of the
most vigorous health, and that his frame was insensible to fatigue. But
careless as he was of his own bodily ease, there was an eye that watched
him with the intensest solicitude; a heart that was pierced with
anxiety, knowing that though "the inner man was renewed day by day,"
the outer man was too surely "perishing," and would soon be laid aside,
forever.

On the 29th of July, 1830, Mrs. Boardman writes to her sister from
Maulmain, whither they had gone for the benefit of her children's
health: "We must look beyond this frail fleeting world for our true
peace. Alas, I know by most bitter experience, that it is in vain to
seek for true happiness here below. My fondest earthly hopes have again
and again been dashed. Torn from the bosom of my dear father's family,
my heart was almost broken; and when I stood by the death-bed of my
sweet, my lovely Sarah, I felt indeed that earthly hopes and joys are
but a dream. But a _darker cloud_ hangs over me. Oh what desolation and
anguish of spirit do I feel, when I think it is possible that in a few
more months, my earthly guide, supporter, and delight, may be no
more!... He has a cough which has been hanging about him a year, and he
is very much reduced by it.... Oh my sister, let us see to it that our
affections are set on things above."

Such "desolation and anguish of spirit" as she here describes, had her
husband felt for _her_ in the preceding year, when for some months
before and after the birth of her second son she lay struggling with a
dangerous disease, which he thought would surely terminate her life. At
that time he wrote: "She still grows weaker, and her case is now more
alarming. Should our friends for whom I have sent to Maulmain come even
immediately, I can scarcely hope for their arrival before the crisis, or
probably, fatal termination of my dear partner's disorder. My comfort in
my present affliction is the thought, that if to our former trials, the
Lord sees fit to add that of removing my beloved companion, he does it
with a perfect knowledge of all the blessedness which death will confer
on _her_, and of all the sorrows and distresses which her loss will
occasion her bereaved husband and orphan children, in our present
peculiar condition. It affords me great relief to have been assured by
her that the bitterness of death is past, and that he