ght the battle of
life for ninety years, fifteen of them on his bed, with eyes so dimmed
by age that he could not even read; and a wife who was eye, ear and
solace to him, are the salient points of our first picture.

They were both earnest, exultant Christians, around whom the angels of
God encamped day and night. The wife was brought up in the West Indies,
as a Catholic, but her ideas of religion consisted mostly in counting
beads on a rosary. After coming to Brooklyn, she became a servant in the
family of a well-known naval officer, and was always a favorite on
account of her vivacity. One day, a young painter who was working there,
and proved to be one of the Christians whose light shines for all in the
house, spoke to her, and invited her to a prayer-meeting in a Protestant
chapel. She refused, laughing; but the painter's assurance next day,
that she had been prayed for in that meeting, made her restless, uneasy
and sick. In a few days, she was confined to her bed and pronounced by
some doctors, a victim to consumption. One, more sagacious than the
rest, said her trouble was of the mind, not the body, and a minister
would be better than a doctor.

It proved to be the case; she was soon led into a glimmering hope,
though feeling that she literally carried a burden on her back. Starting
out, one night, to look for a place of worship, she turned her feet to a
Methodist meeting from whence the sound of singing had reached her. In
the prayer and exhortation, however, there were words which revealed to
her the secret of faith and salvation. She felt the burden loosen and
fall from her shoulders, so sensibly, that involuntarily, she turned and
looked for it on the floor. In a few moments she began to realize the
freedom she had gained, and started to her feet in joy and wonder.

Her work then began in her own home, and through her prayers of faith,
five members of the Commodore's own family and an Irish Catholic servant
girl, were brought to "Christ, the living way." For years her faith was
proved by her works; her daily example in the household, her watchings
and waitings by the bedside of her helpless husband--poverty, sickness,
perplexities of every sort, but made her hope the brighter, her hold the
firmer. With no dependence for their daily bread but the benefactions of
one and another person, sometimes entire strangers, they never knew what
it was to suffer actual want, nor did Frances ever believe that her
friend