bered their sad state.

Bessie had been carefully prepared for the inevitable solitude of her
lot. Her mind was richly stored and her memory so carefully trained,
that it seemed to allow no escape of anything that interested her.
During the long weary days and nights of illness, when deafness isolated
her even more than blindness, she would go over the whole story of a
book read to her years before. She would recall the symphonies and
sonatas she had listened to in early days, and find exceeding great
enjoyment in the memory of her music. Indeed, towards the end she had
but little pleasure in music heard through the outward ear, for her
nerves were not able to endure the shock of a sudden or unexpected
outburst of sound. But the music which she could call from out the
chambers of memory was soft and tender, and its most impassioned
passages gave her no pain. The soul of the music spoke to her soul, and
silence brought to her the rapture of spiritual communion.

In early youth she had been accustomed, in the daily family prayers, to
read in turn her verse of the Lessons and the Psalms. In later years she
always read them to herself or had them read aloud to her. During her
illness she scarcely ever failed to hear them; and the evening Psalms
ended her day. She knew very many of the Psalms by heart, and "specially
delighted in the glorious ascriptions of praise and thanksgiving in
those for the thirtieth evening of the month." She liked to think that
every month and every year at its close was accompanied by praise and
thanksgiving. "It pleased and touched her greatly," writes her sister
N., "that in the New Lectionary the miracle of restoring sight to the
two blind men at Jericho, came as the second lesson for the evening of
her birthday, 7th August.

"One of her most favourite verses in the Psalms was, 'Thou hast given me
the defence of thy salvation. Thy right hand also shall hold me up, and
thy loving correction shall make me great.'"

Two poems from the _Lyra Germanica_ gave her constant comfort, and were
in her heart and on her lips. She found in them the embodiment of her
faith, and could use them not only as expressing her own feelings, but
as bringing comfort and help, because they were the utterance of the
ardent faith and devotion of others.

These two hymns really open to us the inner life of Bessie Gilbert. They
show from whence she derived the strength and courage that supported her
in the efforts and t