The parting scene between Boardman and his religious friends in Waterville, who had assembled to bid him farewell is said by one present on that occasion, to have been exceedingly touching.  “The eye of Boardman was alone undimmed by a tear.  In a tender and yet unfaltering tone he addressed a few words to his brethren.  We all knelt down in prayer together for the last time.  On arising, Boardman passed round the room, and gave to each his hand for the last time.  His countenance was serene, his mild blue eye beamed with benignity, and though there was in his manner a tenderness which showed he had a heart to feel, yet there was no visible emotion till he came to his room-mate.  As he took him by the hand, his whole frame became convulsed, his eye filled, and the tears fell fast, as if all the tender feelings of his spirit, till now imprisoned, had at this moment broken forth—­’farewell!’ he faltered; and then smiling through his tears, said, as he left the room, ’we shall meet again in Heaven.’”

He had expected immediately to leave America for Burmah, in the same ship which was to take Mrs. Judson back to that country, but the Board decided to detain him some time in this country for further preparation.  In June, 1823, he entered on theological studies in the seminary at Andover, and employed all his leisure hours in reading those books in the library which treated of the manners, customs, and religions of heathen countries.

In the spring of 1825 he was called to bid his country farewell.  Natural affection was strong, but the call of duty was stronger still.  In a letter he says, “If tenderness of feeling—­if ardor of affection—­if attachment to friends, to Christian society and Christian privileges—­if apprehension of toil and danger in a missionary life—­if an overwhelming sense of responsibility could detain me in America, I should never go to Burmah.”  And in his journal—­“Welcome separations and farewells; welcome tears; welcome last sad embraces; welcome pangs and griefs; only let me go where my Saviour calls and goes himself; welcome toils, disappointments, fatigues and sorrows; WELCOME AN EARLY GRAVE!”

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It is easy to imagine that the sympathy and affection between two souls constituted like Miss Hall’s and Mr. Boardman’s, both of whom were warmed by the same zeal for the cause of Christ and the welfare of the heathen, would be unusually strong; and indeed there is every evidence, that from the time they became fully acquainted, the most tender attachment subsisted between them.  “You know,” she wrote long afterward to her mother, “how tenderly I loved him;” and to an intimate friend, he said in a private conversation, “It was not the superiority of her personal charms, though these were by no means small, but it was her intrinsic excellence, heightened by her modest, unobtrusive spirit, that endeared her to my heart.”

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