The first letter we have copied was from the wife of the leading lawyer in Roseland and read as follows:
"Roseland.
"Dear Mr. Penloe:
"I would very much have liked to have had an opportunity of meeting you, that I might tell you what I am about to write and very much more. Since I heard your address I so wanted to have a talk with you, as I have so many questions to ask you, and above all to tell you what your message has done for me.
"I am the wife of a lawyer, and at the age of twenty-two I graduated from college. A year afterwards I married Mr. Horton and have been married seven years. My tastes have always been intellectual with a strong desire to lead and to be above those around me. I had little sympathy for the poor and ignorant, and those I had little in common with I kept aloof from. My friends looked to me as an authority on most subjects, as I travelled in Europe two years after I was married. It will do me good now to confess to you and tell you, I was cold, vain, self-conceited and my purpose in reading and travelling was not to help those around me, but to add glory and fame to myself, and to be thought a very superior minded person. I carried my head very high and associated with but few. After seeing you and listening to your address, I can hardly describe the state of mind it left me in. But it was something like a lady might feel when she is dressed in her best and is very proud of her attire. While she is in that frame of mind she meets some one who has garments much superior to hers, and she sees that the clothes she is wearing are unbecoming and do not fit her, and that she has been under an illusion in thinking they were so rich and fine. For when the other garments are shown her, she feels she had been the most mistaken person in the world and longs to cast off the garments she is wearing, that she may put on these superior ones.
"Now that was my case exactly. I was the woman attached to what I thought were my fine clothes. You were the one with the elegant new gowns, and when you showed me so clearly that my own costume was nothing but filthy rags, I was ready to take the superior garments with which you presented me.
"When I think what a foolish, proud, vain woman I have been, I feel like covering my face with shame; like hiding my head somewhere. I intend that these feelings of remorse shall stimulate me towards manifesting the Divine, in love, in patience, in humility, and in meekness.
"I will go among the poor and ignorant and become one with them, in order to raise them to the realization of their Divine nature.
"May they see in me that love for them which I saw in you for all, and it will give me pleasure to tell those of my own circle how sweet the Divine life has become to me, and may I be a spiritual help to them.
"My husband was touched by your words, I am glad to say, and we are both trying to live the Divine life.