CHAPTER II.
A Letter to My Prison Children.
You, dear ones, are my especial care and have been for over twenty long years; and your eternal good will continue in a sense to be first in my thoughts while life lasts.
My own childhood was lonely and desolate. As I have already told you, my father died when I was one year old, and mother died when I was only six. I was taken from my mother's grave by an old man who had, with his wife, asked mother for me before she died. My stepfather went to law with my grandfather, who was guardian for myself and sister, for my father's fortune, and the suit was carried from one court to another until all was gone and we little children were penniless.
Sister and I were reared by our grandparents, and were given a very limited education. We were taught to work as rigidly as if we were paupers. The experience was hard but I can now see how good it was for me in after years to know how to do all kinds of work and be able to do with my might what my hands found to do.
All my life I have known much of SORROW AND DISAPPOINTMENT. It has seemed that I have never been allowed to keep long anything that I loved. When I was a child, my pets would sicken and die, and the friends that I loved best would either move away from me or die; and my heart was being continually crushed and broken by these trials.
I loved to learn and was passionately fond of music, but I was not permitted to gratify my desires in either direction. Why all this was true, I know not, unless it was that I might learn deeper lessons of sympathy and compassion for others that are in trouble.
Perhaps, dear ones, because of these very experiences I can feel more deeply and tenderly for you and I want to tell you that amid all the sorrows of earth I have found one Friend that has never forgotten or forsaken me and that has promised never to leave me. And this same Jesus loves you. If you but give Him your hearts He will never fail you. Though all the world should forsake and despise you, Jesus loves you just the same.
It is He that has put into my heart this love for you and your souls' salvation that I cannot explain; this love that grows deeper and stronger and that can only be made plain in the judgment. He has taught me to feel for you when you are forsaken and forgotten, when even friends turn away because you are doomed to the prison cell, the stripes, and even the scaffold.