true, to the city where we dwelt, to tell of heaven and hell, but wasted much, much of your precious time in indolence, while acquiring our language. And, when you were able to speak, why were you not incessantly telling us of this day of doom, when we visited you? why, oh why did you ever speak of any other thing while we were ignorant of the most momentous of all truths? Oh! how could you think on anything but our salvation? How could you sleep, or allow yourself anything like ease or comfort, while we were perishing, and you knew a Being who could save us, and that Being had promised to grant the petition of his children? You told us that He was your Father, that He heard your lowest whispers and most secret sighs—why, then, did you not, day and night, entreat Him in our behalf?'

Mr. Boardman will tell you of the heartrending afflictions which we have been called to endure in our little church. Our hearts have almost bled with anguish, and mine has sunk lower than the grave, for I have felt that my unworthiness has been the cause of all our calamities."

This trial, which only one class of readers, (heart-christians,) will be able to appreciate,

ended in a blessing; for from this time, the things of heaven began to gain a stronger and firmer hold upon her heart, and a domestic calamity, which soon followed, gave, even while its shadow lay heaviest, additional value to the blessing.

In the spring of 1829, Mrs. Boardman was again visited by severe illness, and her physical constitution became so much impaired, that she was unable to rally, as on former occasions. Her infant son, too, was a pale, puny creature, with his father's spiritual look-the same delicate fashioning of feature and transparency of complexion, and the same blue veins crossing the temples. And the father was not quite

like his former self. His cheeks were a little more hollow, and the colour on them more flickering; his eyes were brighter, and seemingly more deeply set beneath the brow, and immediately below them was a faint, indistinct arc of mingled ash and purple, like the shadow of a fading leaf; his lips were sometimes of a clayey pallor, and sometimes they glowed with crimson; and his fingers were long, and the hands of a partially transparent thinness. None of the family were in health, except the

rosy little daughter,"-the "bright, beautiful darling Sarah Ann," as she was fondly named

in many a letter; and she was their joy and pride. A short trip to Mergui, sea-air and seabathing proved beneficial to them, however, and they returned to their toil with renewed strength and vigour.

CHAPTER VII.

LITTLE SARAH.

"He gazed at the flowers with tearful eyes,
He kissed their drooping leaves;

It was for the Lord of Paradise,

He bound them in his sheaves.

'My Lord has need of these flowerets gay,'
The Reapers said, and smiled;

Dear tokens of the earth are they,
Where he was once a child."

Longfellow.

ARAH is as plump and rosy-cheeked as we could wish. Oh! how delighted you would be to see her, and hear her prattle! Thus wrote the mother in her happiness; and, in a little more than two weeks after, she saw her darling, speechless and motionless, in her little shroud. "I knew all the time," says the bereaved parent, "that she was very ill; but it did not once occur to me that she might die, till she was seized with the apoplexy, about three hours before she closed

her eyes upon us for ever.

that moment!"

Oh! the agony of

And in that agonized moment,

:

as the shadow of eternity fell upon the spirit of the little sufferer, and a vista, which her eye could not discern, but from which her failing nature instinctively recoiled, opened before her, she looked with anxious alarm into her mother's face, and exclaimed :"I frightened! mama! I frightened!" What a strange thing is death. The tender nursling, who in moments of even imagined ill, had clung to the mother's bosom, and been sheltered in her arms, now hovered over a dark, unfathomed gulf, and turned pleadingly to the same shield-but it had failed. The mother's arm was powerless; her foot could not follow ; and the trembling babe passed on alone, to find her fears allayed on an angel's bosom. Mrs. Boardman followed her first-born to the grave with faltering steps, and then returned to her other stricken child. "He lay," she says, "feeble and emaciated, in the arms of his nurse; and, for the first time since he was two months old, refused to notice us. On the next Sabbath night, we watched him till morning, expecting every breath to be his last. But our Heavenly Father is kind, and he did not take from us both our blossoms." The fol