Mr. Woodruff's sister wrote, Feb. 15, 1886:
"Some one very kindly sent us the obituary of our dear friend Miss Ellis. We were surprised and deeply grieved to hear of her death, as we did not know that her health was poor even. She said so little about herself, that we never thought of her as otherwise than well and strong.... I enjoyed Miss Ellis's letters so much, and we appreciated her kindness in writing to us after my dear brother's death. He thought so much of Miss Ellis, and I know if he had lived you would not have been disappointed in him. I cannot thank you sufficiently for the little book you sent mother after J——'s death. Truly it was a 'Light on the Cloud,' and it comforted mother more than I can tell you. It is so full of comforting words.
"Though Miss Ellis is gone from us, she has left behind the influence of a life so pure, so noble, and so grand, that we will all be the better for having known her. As my brother once wrote in a friend's album, 'God wisely wills that we may not know the number of our years, and in view of the uncertainty which enshrouds each to-morrow, let us so live that be our lives long or short, the little home-world that surrounds us will be the better for our having lived in it.' Can we not say that these two did not live in vain? My brother had a great influence over young people and also over some who were much older than he, and had he been spared, I feel sure that he would have done a grand work for the cause of Christianity. But their life work is ended only too soon; and why they should be taken when they were doing so much good, and others who are a burden to themselves and others are left, I suppose we shall know sometime; and until that time we must believe that 'He doeth all things well.'"
Miss Ellis's letters frequently express her joy in a young man who had become a Unitarian minister through her efforts. He was a Methodist minister in Ohio, but had grown unable longer to accept the creed of his church. Unhappy, unsettled, and adrift, not knowing where to turn for help, by the merest "chance" he picked up on a railroad car a Cincinnati paper, and his eye fell on the Women's Auxiliary Conference advertisement. He wrote Miss Ellis a postal card, saying:—
"I have seen your notice in the 'Commercial,' offering Unitarian papers and tracts free to persons who may desire to read them. I must confess to more ignorance in regard to Unitarian doctrines than is seemly in a minister of the gospel, and will be thankful indeed if you will kindly favor me with such papers and tracts as may enlighten me ever so little."
Later he wrote:—
"You have helped me not a little in my search for truth. Before I first wrote you for tracts, etc., I knew absolutely nothing of Unitarianism beyond the term, and the fact that Unitarians did not believe Christ to have been God."
Miss Ellis corresponded with him from that time on, loaning many books, etc. It was never her wish or aim to unsettle persons of a fixed faith. She sought rather to reach and help those who, by reading and thinking, had become dissatisfied with the only forms of religious faith known to them, and were consequently drifting into scepticism. Mr. ——'s own letters best tell the story. After Miss Ellis's death, he wrote Feb. 3,1886:
"I had long been wondering why I did not hear from her, but supposed that she found her time so engrossed with her chosen work that she must defer writing until some more convenient season. She had, it is true, hinted at her failing health, but I never dreamed it was so bad. My first intimation of the real state of affairs was the notice of her death. I need not say that I was startled, that I regret our common loss; these are but feeble expressions.
"Through all my life here at Cambridge I have been anticipating the day when, returning West, I should meet her, and in some degree thank her for the help and comfort she brought me in life. This has become such a fixed idea with me, that it is hard to believe, as I write this, that it can never be in this world. It seems very strange that the one friend who did me such a supreme kindness in life I shall never meet.
"She was the very messenger of God to me, and is inseparably associated with the most trying period of my life. The only conceptions of religion I had ever had were proving unreal and worthless, and no one offered anything as a substitute. As I look back, the peril of my situation seems much greater than it did at the time. I fear I should have become insincere, or, what is perhaps almost as bad, should have fallen into a sort of despairing scepticism. Heaven in mercy saved me from it; but I shall not forget that even Heaven might not have found a way to do this, had there been no Miss Ellis. It was but a little thing, a trifle, a brief notice in a daily paper, that in some way caught a careless reader's eye. But my whole life is changed in consequence.
"And so, while you miss her in her place and in your work, in your church and social life, I, too, here in New England miss her. I feel as if something is gone out of my life and I have really one less reason for returning West when my school work is done. But I have if possible an additional incentive to a good life. I trust I shall hear that your work is still going on successfully. I assure you I shall never lose interest in your Mission, and shall never cease to regard it as in some sense a home into which I was adopted. I sincerely hope I shall never do it any discredit."
In a letter to Mrs. Hunert, Miss Ellis's successor, he says:—