to go to the fellowship of those who have done with them forever, and are perfect and entire, wanting nothing.  Dear Nelly, I pray that you may have as easy a journey homeward as your Father’s love and compassion can make for you; but these sufferings at the worst can not last long, and they are only the messengers sent to loosen your last tie on earth, and conduct you to the sweetest rest.  But I dare not write more lest I weary your poor worn frame with words.  May the very God of peace be with you every moment, even unto the end, and keep your heart and mind stayed upon Him!

Mrs. Payson had been an intimate friend of her childhood, and was endeared to her by uncommon loveliness and excellence of character.  The bereaved husband, with his little boy, passed a portion of the ensuing winter at the parsonage in New York.  There was something about the child, a sweetness and a clinging, almost wild, devotion to his father, which, together with his motherless state, touched his aunt to the quick and called forth her tenderest love.  Many a page of Stepping Heavenward was written with this child in her arms; and perhaps that is one secret of its power.  When, not very long afterwards, he went to his mother, Mrs. Prentiss wrote to the father: 

Only this morning I was trying to invent some way of framing my little picture of Francis, so as to see it every day before my eyes.  And now this evening’s mail brings your letter, and I am trying to believe what it says is true.  If grief and pain could comfort you, you would be comforted; we all loved Francis, and A. has always said he was too lovely to live.  How are you going to bear this new blow?  My heart aches as it asks the question, aches and trembles for you.  But perhaps you loved him so, that you will come to be willing to have him in his dear mother’s safe keeping; will bear your own pain in future because through your anguish your lamb is sheltered forever, to know no more pain, to suffer no more for lack of womanly care, and is already developing into the rare character which made him so precious to you.  Oh do try to rejoice for him while you can not but mourn for yourself.  At the longest you will not have long to suffer; we are a short-lived race.

But while I write I feel that I want some one to speak a comforting word to me; I too am bereaved in the death of this precious child, and my sympathy for you is in itself a pang.  Dear little lamb!  I can not realise that I shall never see that sweet face again in this world; but I shall see it in heaven.  God bless and comfort you, my dear afflicted brother.  I dare not weary you with words which all seem a mockery; I can only assure you of my tenderest love and sympathy, and that we all feel with and for you as only those can who know what this child was to you.  I am going to bed with an aching heart, praying that light may spring out of this darkness.  Give love from us all to Ned and Will.  Perhaps Ned will kindly write me if you feel that you can not, and tell me all about the dear child’s illness.