most active assistance. Little children she tenderly loved. To watch and foster the expanding germs that shoot daily in a young child's spirit, was to her an ineffable happiness. What wonder that her heart swelled, almost to rapture, when, in the first year of her wifehood, the precious promise of maternity was accorded her! How full of grateful, tearfully grateful, delight were her day dreams, as she sat plying her needle upon tiny caps, and dresses, and sacques, and picturing to herself the little wearer, towards whom her heart yearned with the most bounteous love!
She felt that the woman to whom the guardianship of a child's immortal soul is entrusted, shares the holy office that angels are ever discharging, the guiding of young feet along the paths that lead to heaven. In the words of the greatest, wisest of woman-poets, that
A woman; set her in the sight of all
The clear-eyed heavens, a chosen minister
To do their business and lead spirits up
The difficult, blue heights."
And now the hour to which Amy had looked forward with so much tender thankfulness, was at hand. That hour was one of more than ordinary danger. For two days her, life was in imminent peril. Her protracted sufferings were borne with womanly heroism, a heroism not less wonderful because it is not rare. On the morning of the third
