A one-sided correspondence, we have been treated to, which, though one-sided, has nevertheless given us as good an insight into the one addressed as if she had done all the writing; better perhaps; for now we are to hear her voice, which in its agitation and perplexity, does not, it may be, reveal her as she is:
"I have stretched forth my hands and nailed my heart to the Cross. You may cast it from you, but conscience nailed it there. For awhile I cheated myself with the belief that its voice mingled with the voice of my heart, 'You are already prepared; go with him.' But it was only the echo of my heart's happy song. I feel that I would be an incumbrance, rather than your co-worker. However mournfully my heart may cry, however beseechingly, I cannot go with you. Conscience, my guide, beckons me, and fervently I follow, though my heart is torn asunder. Ah, the bloodless battles that are fought in our world! You have said, 'Although I love you as I love no one else on earth, still, if you deny me, I must go alone.' I say in reply, that though I love you with that love of which only a Christian woman is susceptible, I cannot go with you. Your capabilities fit you for one field of labor, mine fit me for another. We have all to build an altar. I have built mine, and laid thereon my tenderest feelings, the yearning desire of the woman-nature to be loved. I know that this mysterious yearning which God has planted with his own hand in woman's heart will, if left unsatisfied, cast a shadow over her life; that however strong, however self-reliant a woman may be, her heart reaches out for something to complete her happiness. But the giant will can strengthen the trembling, faltering heart.
"And it is well to nail the heart to the Cross that raises it nearer to God. He will give it strength to suffer. And his love can never fail. Do not think that I am staggering under complaint. Like a cheerful traveler I will take up my life-burden, and continue the journey, with a song in my mouth, keeping time to the voice of conscience and my God. Do not think for a moment, Ollie, that I would dissuade you from entering upon your grand mission. What I said to you before I knew you loved me, I say to you now, though it wrings my heart with an anguish that I sometimes think cannot be borne. Sometimes I feel that my heart must break, but it is sustained by the love of God. If conscience bids you go, then you must go. But I cannot conceive how conscience would say to you to leave a field in which laborers are few, for one which may cost you your life. I am impressed that going is a matter of inclination rather than of conscience. Nevertheless, if conscience does tell you so, then I urge you with all the earnestness of my soul, to go. Go; and the burdens of my prayers will be for him so far away, and yet so very near."
Alas! how great a mountain is our own conscience, and how small a molehill that of our neighbor! Mattie, who has been pointing out that all her future misery is to come from obeying her own, pauses to doubt if Oliver's conscience is a conscience at all! On such provocation as that, who can blame Oliver for having doubts about Mattie's conscience? That he did have doubts, and that he did his utmost to cause her to agree with him, no one can doubt with the following letter before him:
"Dear Mattie:—Yours received. I heartily agree to March 26th as our wedding day. I will write to tell sister Mary and Matt to come down to May's Lick on the 27th. Saturday I will deliver my farewell address here. We will go to Maysville en route for Cincinnati. Horace came from Flemingsburg yesterday to find out something about it. Matt, Bud and Mollie are coming.
"Mattie, I have the best kind of news to tell you. Hold your breath while you read. Father came forward at church yesterday, and made the good confession. 'Bless the Lord, O my soul and all that is within me, bless his holy name!' I recognized in that, the answer to many a prayer. And now if my mother would obey the gospel I would believe your prophecy uttered at President Milligan's reception was fulfilled. Do you remember what it was?—'Brother Ollie, I believe God will make you instrumental in bringing your family into the fold.' Oh, will that ever be? Mother won't go to church. She has never heard me preach but twice; but I will pray on, and hope on."