‘I am thankful that you do not suffer greatly. I fondly hope that this trial may be spared. I do not feel inclined to add more. I need not,—you know so much of your own loving Char.’
TO MISS ‘LEILA’ HAMILTON.
‘April 13, 1892.
‘Though I wrote to your beloved Mother yesterday, and shall only be just in time to catch the post, my heart impels me to send a letter to you, my dear afflicted God-daughter. I know that you try bravely to bear up under your sore trial, so as not to add to that of your precious invalid.... I am glad that I have been told the worst. It has been good for my soul! Only the day before the mail came in, I had been foolishly, sinfully, brooding over trifles, till I even showed outward irritation, instead of reflecting that small annoyances as well as great troubles are God’s loving discipline for us. Alas! that I should have shown temper! The next day the Lord sent a quiet, holy sorrow, and it did me good,—tears were wholesome,—I felt that I had been petty and irritable, and deserved a different kind of trial. I have been more under discipline since I attained the age of seventy than I have perhaps ever been before in India. But should trifles disturb the serenity of a Servant of a Crucified Saviour?... Thinking of your real grief, I hope to be more patient with petty annoyances....
‘Write freely to me, dear Leila. To help you in your trouble will not do me harm but good.’
‘April 17, 1892.—Beloved Laura, “The Lord is Risen indeed!” This is the Easter greeting, and this is Easter morn. I shall soon start for church; but first I would remind my darling sister and myself of words like the clarion of a silver trumpet, followed by the sound of an angel’s harp:—
‘“The Lord hath triumphed gloriously;
The Lord shall reign victoriously!
Seals assuring,