." The week before
Easter, when the Bishop visited the hospital to administer
confirmation, William was placed in a chair to receive the rite, and on
Easter Day partook of his first communion. It was a glorious day for
him. Mrs. Knowles visited him on that day.

A few days after, as I sat by his bedside, he was speaking, as he
always did now, of his sense of sinfulness, and his sense of pardon,
when I reminded him of the early conversation, before alluded to, in
which he had rested on his own moral character for acceptance with God.

"Yes," he replied, "I used to think so, but I have been all wrong. Now
I have no dependence but upon Jesus Christ."

A little before this, he had said to Mrs. Knowles: "I never knew that
just trusting in Christ would give me such peace."

He has said repeatedly: "This sickness is the best thing that has ever
happened to me. If it had not been for this, I should have gone on in
worldliness."

William has never been accustomed to the common religious phraseology.
He is such a babe in such things, that his expressions are sometimes
strikingly artless. At one time I was speaking of his sufferings, he
looked up with a smile, and hesitating how to express the thought in
his mind, said:

"I think it is out of his affections God afflicts us."

His sister had wept much when I delivered his message. As I returned a
kind reply from her, he said:

"Tell her I pray for her and her family every day." Then, when after a
little conversation I had bidden him good-by, he called me back, and
said:

"Be sure and tell my sister I pray for her." He frequently said to me:

"I pray for you everyday;" and on saying this to Mrs. Knowles, he
added, at one time:

"I speak your name to God when I pray."

When he says this with so much earnestness, we always feel that his
prayers are a rare treasure, since the helpless, self-renouncing
prayers are most prevalent in Christ. The tenderness with which William
speaks of his sister's family has sometimes touched me. There is
nothing like the peace of God to beget good will to man. Knowing that
the family had many trials with his sister's ill health and scanty
means, he often sends by me messages of sympathy. A few days since it
was suddenly discovered that their youngest child, two years old, and a
little pet of William's, was in danger of being crippled for life. This
new and unexpected sorrow filled the family with great distress. I
accompanied the father w