llow-servant; and through
the desultory assistance obtained in this way, backed by her solitary
efforts at self-instruction, she learned to read. She must have deemed
that an important day on which she found she could at length converse
with books; and the books with which she most loved to discourse were
such as related to the spiritual state. She pored over the Shorter
Catechism, and acquainted herself with her Bible. But for years
together, at this period, she suffered much distress of mind. Her
imagination possessed a wild activity, and the scenes and shapes which
it was continually calling up before her were all of horror and
dismay--the place of the lost, the appalling forms with which fancy
invests the fallen spirits, the terrors of the last day, and the dread
throne of judgment. But a time of peace and comfort came; and she was
enabled to lay hold on God in faith and hope as _her_ God, through the
all-sufficient blood of the atonement. And this hold she never after
relinquished.

There was no pause in her humble toils. From her early occupations
in the fields, she passed in riper youth to the labours of the
farm-house; and at the age of twenty-five experienced yet another
change, in becoming the wife of a farm-servant, a quiet man of solid
character, and whose religious views and feelings coincided with her
own. Her humble home was a solitary hut on the uplands, far from even
her nearest neighbours; but it was her home, and she was happy. With
the consent of her husband, she took her aged mother under her
care, and succeeded in repaying more than the obligations incurred
in infancy; for her instructions, through the blessing of God, were
rendered apparently the means of the old woman's conversion. There
were sorrows that came to her even at the happiest, but they were
mingled with comfort. She lost one of her children by small-pox at
a very early age; and yet, very early as the age was, evidence was
not wanting in its death that the Psalmist spoke with full meaning
when he said that God can perfect praise out of the mouths of babes
and sucklings. But there was a deeper grief awaiting her. After a
happy union of twelve years, her husband was seized in the night
in their lonely shieling by a mortal distemper, at a time when only
herself and her young children were present, and ere assistance
could be procured he expired. There is something extremely touching
in the details of this event, as given by the poet, her