“I was,” says she, in substance, “suffering keenly from a severe trial, and had secluded myself from all my friends, when Margaret, a girl of twenty, forced her way to me.  She sat with me, and gave me her sympathy, and, with most affectionate interest, sought to draw me away from my gloom.  As far as she was able, she gave me comfort.  But as my thoughts were then much led to religious subjects, she sought to learn my religious experience, and listened to it with great interest.  I told her how I had sat in darkness for two long years, waiting for the light, and in full faith that it would come; how I had kept my soul patient and quiet,—­had surrendered self-will to God’s will,—­had watched and waited till at last His great mercy came in an infinite peace to my soul.  Margaret was never weary of asking me concerning this state, and said, ’I would gladly give all my talents and knowledge for such an experience as this.’

“Several years after,” continues this friend, “I was travelling with her, and we sat, one lovely night, looking at the river, as it rolled beneath the yellow moonlight.  We spoke again of God’s light in the soul, and I said—­’Margaret! has that light dawned on your soul?’ She answered, ’I think it has.  But, oh! it is so glorious that I fear it will not be permanent, and so precious that I dare not speak of it, lest it should be gone.’

“That was the whole of our conversation, and I did not speak to her again concerning it.”

* * * * *

Before this time, however, during her residence at Cambridge, she seemed to reach the period of her existence in which she descended lowest into the depths of gloom.  She felt keenly, at this time, the want of a home for her heart.  Full of a profound tendency toward life, capable of an ardent love, her affections were thrown back on her heart, to become stagnant, and for a while to grow bitter there; Then it was that she felt how empty and worthless were all the attainments and triumphs of the mere intellect; then it was that “she went about to cause her heart to despair of all the labor she had taken under the sun.”  Had she not emerged from this valley of the shadow of death, and come on to a higher plane of conviction and hope, her life would have been a most painful tragedy.  But, when we know how she passed on and up, ever higher and higher, to the mountain-top, leaving one by one these dark ravines and mist-shrouded valleys, and ascending to where a perpetual sunshine lay, above the region of clouds, and was able to overlook with eagle glance the widest panorama,—­we can read, with sympathy indeed, but without pain, the following extracts from a journal:—­