STORY OF A WOMAN'S 
 LIFE AND WORK 
 
ADELTHA; 
 
 A True Story of a Woman s Life 
 
 and Work. 
 
 BY 
 
 MRS. ELIZABETH M. ROWLAND. 
 
 
 BOSTON AND CHICAGO: 
 (£angrcgattanal <Suntiau= School anti lEhtbltsIjtng S'Ortetg. 
 
Copyright, 1888, 
 
 Congregational Sunday-School and Publishing Society. 
 
 Electrotyped and Printed by Stanley Usher, 
 JJI Devonshire Street, Poston. 
 
ADELTHA. 
 
 When I was a little girl I went with my mother 
 into the country during the summer vacation and 
 boarded for a few weeks in a village on the western 
 edge of Maine, within sight and drive of the 
 White Mountains of New Hampshire. While 
 there I made the acquaintance of a girl of thir¬ 
 teen, which soon ripened into an intimacy of the 
 desperate, all-absorbing, school-girl sort, yet one 
 which lasted twenty years ; and it is the story 
 of this girl’s life and work that I am to tell. 
 
 I tell the story in detail, because the very point 
 of it is that her work was herself, and the only 
 way to understand her influence was to become 
 acquainted with her personally. 
 
 At that time Adeltha was a very tall, large 
 girl, rather raw-boned and awkward, with straight, 
 abundant flaxen hair and not a single pretty 
 feature. But she was young, in perfect health, 
 something of a flirt among the boys at the acad¬ 
 emy, an average scholar, but quick, bright, and 
 interested in every thing that was going on, and 
 distinguished from the other girls by a certain 
 light-heartedness, a bubbling over of animal life 
 
4 
 
 ADELTHA. 
 
 and spirits that gave every body who met her an 
 impression of sunshine and a fresh breeze. 
 
 At sixteen, with the maturity of twenty, this 
 typical Yankee girl, like hundreds of others, was 
 teaching. She had already tried her hand in the 
 district schools near home, but now she was at the 
 head of an academy “ down east ” on the Penob¬ 
 scot, teaching “ French and fancy-work and oriental 
 painting/’ after the manner of the smart girls of 
 the last generation. So far her religious life had 
 consisted in going to church and in learning her 
 Sunday-school lesson, and although she always 
 “said her prayers” when she went to bed, I’ve 
 heard her say that up to this time she never gave 
 a single minute to thoughts of religion. 
 
 My first letter from her was full of her school 
 and her new acquaintances. In a week or two I 
 had another in which she said something like this: 
 “ I ’m thinking of something else now. I’m try¬ 
 ing to be a Christian. Something that the minister 
 has said has set me to thinking.” 
 
 That was all she had to say about it. I had 
 grown up in an old-fashioned church where the 
 few people who were converted went through 
 a regular order of feeling. First they were 
 “ serious,” then “ under conviction,” then they 
 “indulged a hope” and remained “serious,” at 
 least for a few months. Mother shook her head 
 when, her term over, Adeltha visited me on her 
 way home. Adeltha was no more “ serious ” than 
 
ADELTHA . 
 
 5 
 
 ever. She was just as lively and noisy and gay as 
 when she visited me before. But at night she 
 talked with me and prayed with me and said we 
 must try together. Years afterwards she wrote 
 me: “There never was a smaller mustard-seed of 
 faith and purpose in any body’s heart than in mine 
 when I began to be a Christian.” 
 
 The seed was not only small but it was of slow 
 growth. For a year or two she was just an ordi¬ 
 nary church member, a good girl in the sense that 
 she was not a bad one, and that was all. She 
 developed physically into almost a beauty. After 
 a slight sickness her flaxen hair grew golden and 
 curly, and her one beauty, a perfect flush that 
 came and went as she talked, gave her face the 
 attraction of color which is at once so charming 
 and so fleeting. 
 
 Now was her time of social triumph. She 
 studied in one or two different places and taught 
 in others and every-where she went she made friends 
 with her bright, attractive manner and her warm, 
 sympathetic heart. Men and women found her the 
 best of company. Unmarried men invariably 
 offered to marry her. In one year I remember 
 she had dangling at her heels and unwilling to 
 take “no” for an answer, a gawky back-country 
 lad, a dashing young sea-captain, a Congregational 
 minister, and a New York artist whose name I 
 often see now in the papers ; and it was through 
 the perplexities and heartaches and disappoint- 
 
6 * 
 
 ADELTHA. 
 
 merits of these and other love affairs that there 
 came a discipline which began to change the 
 thoughtless girl into the remarkable Christian 
 woman. 
 
 The summer of i860 came. She was anxious 
 to go South to teach, and through the advice of a 
 summer boarder she advertised in The National 
 Era, a Washington paper with a large Southern 
 circulation. The modest advertisement read as 
 follows : — 
 
 “ Wanted. — A position, South, for a young 
 lady, as governess. Address Rev. -, -, 
 
 She gave the name of her uncle, the minister 
 in the village. 
 
 I was visiting there when the advertisement 
 was sent on. It was a secret in the familv, and as 
 great an event, to be talked over under our breath, 
 as going to Japan would be now. Every day 
 Adeltha would go away by herself and pray that 
 God would decide her future for her. Before I left 
 the answers began to come. Every mail brought 
 them ; if I remember rightly there were fifteen 
 of one sort and another, — a fabulous number the 
 summer boarder said, who had had but one answer 
 herself; and choosing from among these chances, 
 three spunky Yankee girls set off by October : 
 a friend for Kentucky, her sister for Maryland, 
 and Adeltha for Macon, Georgia. 
 
ADELTHA. 
 
 7 
 
 In December, i860, South Carolina seceded, and 
 Adeltha’s letters were full of the matter. She 
 was an arrant secessionist. “ I believe the South 
 ought to be let alone and secede if it wants to, — 
 only I ’ll come home,” she wrote. Then suddenly 
 her letters stopped. Sumter fell. Then came 
 the call to arms. Her sister reached home with 
 difficulty through the blood-stained streets of Bal¬ 
 timore, and her brother joined the Northern 
 army. Spring and summer passed without a 
 word from her, when one September day I 
 received a letter from her, dated New York, and 
 the next day she was with us, at home again, 
 a changed woman — the same and yet not the 
 same. 
 
 “I’ve learned to pray,” she said, “though I 
 thought I knew how before. When the letters 
 from home stopped and I found mine did not get 
 through, it began to dawn upon me that I was an 
 exile and a prisoner. Then I began to cry to God 
 for help. They treated me like a dear friend. Be¬ 
 fore the pinch came they took me to The 
 Springs with them and I joined with them in all 
 their festivities. But when the battle of Manas¬ 
 sas came (first Bull Run) and the papers reported 
 the Maine regiments as among those which were 
 all cut up, my heart sunk within me. I knew my 
 brother would be in the army — perhaps he was 
 dead ; and I just cried out to God to let me go 
 home. 
 
8 
 
 ADELTHA. 
 
 “ But there was no possible way to get home, 
 they told me; all communication was cut off. I 
 lost twenty pounds in a few weeks, till my southern 
 friends said I should die on their hands if they did 
 not get rid of me. I would n’t give up. I kept 
 praying. One day we met at a dinner party a 
 man who had just come through the lines by way 
 of Fortress Monroe. Here was my chance. If 
 he could come, I could go. We found a Confed¬ 
 erate soldier who was going that way in a day or 
 two to join his regiment. They paid me up 
 every cent in gold and packed me off under the 
 soldier’s care.” 
 
 And I might add that they weighed her down 
 with enough letters to post when she got North, 
 to have hung her for a traitor for aught I know. 
 
 She committed her way to God and set out on 
 her perilous journey, and verily her way was pre¬ 
 pared for her in the midst of her enemies. At 
 Fortress Monroe she found people who had been 
 waiting for weeks, but she was exchanged with 
 only a few hours’ delay. A Union soldier going 
 home on a furlough took her in charge ; friends 
 sprang up out of the ground; every body be¬ 
 friended her; and here she was safe at home, her 
 brother in the army, but unharmed, and her simple 
 explanation was : “ I cried unto the Lord and he 
 heard me.” 
 
 I have been thus particular because I wish to 
 emphasize the fact that a saintly character was 
 
ADELTHA. 
 
 9 
 
 made out of what we should have called unprom¬ 
 ising material. 
 
 She was now twenty-one years old, but there 
 had been crowded into the last four years of her 
 life more experiences and adventures than fall to 
 the lot of most women in a life-time, and the change 
 that I noticed in her was her wonderful intimacy 
 with God. It did not seem to be prayer so much 
 as an indwelling. She would lay down her book 
 and say with the greatest freedom and simplicity : 
 “ I ’m going upstairs a little while now. I ’m 
 sleepy if I leave my prayers till night.” She 
 would be gone an hour, and I would know by the 
 low sound through the closed door that she was 
 praying. Once when I was visiting at the farm in 
 the dead of winter, I would see her, day after day, 
 dress as if to go out-of-doors, take a sleigh-robe, and 
 go away by herself in a cold room for a literal hour 
 of devotion. She carried every thing to God in 
 prayer and expected and received answers. She 
 prayed about the smallest matters and talked of 
 her trust in God with a familiarity which was not 
 irreverent and disgusting only because it was so 
 simple and unconscious. 
 
 Every one who met her began to feel this pres¬ 
 ence of God. She spoke of the Saviour as freely 
 as of her brother in the army, and whether it falls 
 in with any body’s theory or not, I am bound 
 to say with just the same light-hearted, fond, per¬ 
 sonal affection. She would ask a girl to her room 
 
IO 
 
 ADELTHA. 
 
 to try to help her find God with no more ado than 
 if she had taken her upstairs to show her a new 
 stitch in crocheting. If young men made love to 
 her, and they continued to, she diverted their 
 minds by trying to convert them. They came to 
 woo and remained to pray. Some of the most 
 remarkable cases I ever knew of personal work 
 for souls were among these would-be lovers, and 
 are not for me to make public. 
 
 It was the next year, I think, that she went to 
 teach a private school in a little village in the 
 Connecticut valley. She wrote me often, and the 
 accounts of that winter’s work made a great 
 impression on me. 
 
 “After I had the school organized,” she wrote 
 me, “ I asked the class in French to remain awhile 
 one night, as they were the oldest scholars. I 
 told them I wanted to help them to be Christians 
 this winter as well as to teach them their lessons, 
 and after talking with them I prayed with them.” 
 
 There was no waiting for opportunity, we see; 
 she made her opportunity. Very soon some of her 
 scholars were rejoicing in a new-found hope ; then 
 some of the parents were reached ; and soon a 
 gracious revival was felt in the church, springing, 
 as far as human eye could see, from the work in 
 that little school. 
 
 One incident in connection with it lingers in my 
 memory. A boy or lad, on the debatable ground 
 between boy and man, came to her to ask her to 
 
ADELTHA. 
 
 II 
 
 give him music lessons on the cabinet organ. He 
 worked by day and must take his lesson in the 
 evening ; must call for his teacher and take her to 
 his organ and walk back with her. “ I could n’t 
 think of it for a minute,” she said. “ I was tired 
 with my day’s work, and to give up two evenings 
 and take those two walks in all weathers, with that 
 boy and for almost no pay too, for he was poor, 
 why ! the absurdity of it! But after praying about 
 it, I felt I must do it; so asking God to accept 
 the work as done for him, I agreed to give the 
 lessons. 
 
 “ So, as we were plodding along the road in the 
 dark, I asked the young fellow if he was a Chris¬ 
 tian. He was n’t disposed to talk much, but I 
 talked to him and told him what God expected of 
 him and that I should pray for him. The next 
 time he came for me, as soon as we were out of 
 the house, he told me that he had given his heart 
 to God.” He told her, too, that after he left her 
 at her door that night he met some of the boys 
 and told them as a joke that his music teacher was 
 going to convert him, and they had a good laugh 
 together over it and made fun of it all. But after 
 he left them it came over him what a wicked thing 
 he had done, and he was so distressed that he went 
 into a barn by the roadside and fell down on his 
 knees before God, asked his forgiveness and prom¬ 
 ised to take heed to the friendly warning. She 
 wrote me : “This young man had a good mother 
 
12 
 
 ADELTHA. 
 
 who was praying for him, and if I had n’t spoken 
 God would have taken some other way to answer 
 her prayers. But because I was willing to speak 
 to him and pray for him, God let me have the 
 privilege of leading him to his Saviour.” 
 
 Spending the winter in this same village there 
 was a young married woman from Brooklyn, with 
 a family of little children. Her husband had con¬ 
 nections in the place, and as he was making some 
 change in his business he had put his family there 
 for the season while he was away. It so happened 
 that Mrs. B., engrossed in family cares, and Adel- 
 tha, busy in her school, did not meet for months. 
 In so small a village this may seem incredible, but 
 is perhaps explained by the fact that Mrs. B., who 
 was thoroughly irreligious and took no part in 
 church affairs, had conceived a dislike for the very 
 name of the school-teacher, who, she was sure, 
 was so extra good and pious that she, for her part, 
 did not want to meet her. 
 
 Now one morning, it was a Saturday or some 
 holiday, Adeltha felt very much drawn to God in 
 prayer for a particular request, which was that 
 God would take that day’s work in charge; that 
 whatever she was led to do might be owned 
 and blessed by him ; and, her prayer over, she 
 dressed to go out on a distant errand. It was 
 a perfect day, the sky clear, the air like wine. 
 After a few minutes’ walk, a young lady friend 
 overtook her in a sleigh and invited her to get in 
 for a ride, saying, — 
 
ADELTHA. 
 
 13 
 
 going 
 
 “This is my cousin, Mrs. B., and we’re 
 to Springfield on a lark.” 
 
 Without a minute’s hesitation Adeltha jumped 
 in, and off the three young women went ; and 
 from my knowledge of two of them I have no 
 doubt they were as noisy and undignified and jolly 
 as three school-girls would have been. Adeltha 
 was like a rubber ball : the reaction from an hour’s 
 prayer was naturally an hour’s laughing. They 
 dined at the Massasoit, and bumped home on 
 nearly bare ground but in great spirits. 
 
 In the quiet of her room, however, ’Deltha 
 thought of her morning prayer. 
 
 ti 
 
 I 
 
 thought 
 
 it all over,” she told me, “and I 
 
 could n’t remember that I ’d talked about any body 
 or said any thing I ought not to, only I’d been 
 full of fun. I just could n’t help it, it was so nice 
 being out driving on such a day and we were all 
 so happy. So I asked God to forgive what had 
 been wrong, and I was so tired I went straight to 
 bed.” 
 
 But God had owned the day whose laughter 
 was consecrated to him. Mrs. B. followed up the 
 new acquaintance and in a very short time came 
 out a decided Christian. She told Adeltha : — 
 
 “When Cousin Abby and I saw you on the 
 road that morning, and she said : ‘ Let’s ask her 
 to go with us,’ I demurred. I did n’t want you, 
 for I was sure a woman so pious as you were said 
 to be would also be poky. But when I heard 
 
H 
 
 ADELTHA. 
 
 you laugh and joke and enter into our good times 
 all day, I said to myself: ‘ If a woman can be so 
 pleasant and so nice, and a Christian too, I should 
 like to be one.’ ” 
 
 Mrs. B. clung to her new-found friend, made 
 her leave her boarding-place and come to live 
 with her, saying, — 
 
 “ Don’t pay any board. I ’ll pay you for 
 coming, if necessary.” 
 
 Her husband came home, was astonished at the 
 change in his wife, and with the help of this new¬ 
 found friend, began a Christian life too. I met 
 them at Adeltha’s wedding a year or two after¬ 
 ward. They were then both members of Dr. C.’s 
 church, and he had a large class of boys in the 
 Sunday-school and was quite a prominent member 
 of the church. 
 
 It was during this year which she spent in 
 Brooklyn and with another friend near New York 
 City that her lungs began to trouble her. She 
 lost her freshness and roundness ; had to be careful 
 in bad weather, and without being at all sick, 
 made the discovery that her time of bounding 
 physical vigor was past. 
 
 She had always been very much interested 
 in foreign missions, and had she lived twenty 
 years later there is no doubt she would have gone 
 abroad, but single women did not go much till 
 after the war was over. She hailed the opportu¬ 
 nity offered by the American Missionary Associa- 
 
ADELTHA. 
 
 15 
 
 tion and went South among its earlier teachers in 
 the spirit of a foreign missionary. 
 
 She was now twenty-four years old. The year 
 was one of great hardship, privation, and unceas¬ 
 ing toil for herself and sister, who went with her. 
 They sailed in a vessel which proved unseaworthy 
 and narrowly escaped shipwreck. They were sent 
 to Hilton Head Island, opposite Port Royal, at 
 the southern extremity of South Carolina, and 
 labored among the cotton-hands of the plantations 
 there and among the refugees driven in there by 
 Sherman’s March to the Sea. The able-bodied 
 blacks were taken as soldiers ; the old and infirm, 
 the women and children were sent to such stations 
 and huddled together like sheep. The teachers’ 
 quarters were in a deserted house built in a south¬ 
 ern fashion — set up on posts above the ground. 
 At one time sixty negroes lived, ate, and slept in 
 this open space under the house, and the small¬ 
 pox broke out among them ! Every night the 
 teachers lay down feeling that only God’s mercy 
 kept them from dying of pestilence or being 
 burned alive before morning. 
 
 The average attendance of their school, which 
 was held in this house with their own chamber 
 for one of the recitation rooms, was one hundred 
 and seventy, in ages varying from four to twenty- 
 five, and to accommodate them at all one half 
 came from eight to twelve in the forenoon and the 
 other half from one to five in the afternoon. It 
 
i6 
 
 ADELTHA. 
 
 was not a time for reaping a harvest, or sowing 
 seed even, but only of preparing the ground, and 
 after eight hours’ work in the school, these girls 
 spent their evenings in visiting the sick, clothing 
 the naked, holding sewing schools for the mothers, 
 holding or attending three prayer-meetings a week, 
 and at night lay down, wearily, in rooms where the 
 dirty, ragged scholars had been all day: waked to 
 see great rats looking, at them through holes in the 
 plastering, and got up night after night to drench 
 their beds with kerosene oil that they might not 
 be devoured by the bedbugs and vermin that 
 swarmed from every crack. This was the romance 
 of missionary life in those days. 
 
 Stationed on the island there was a colored 
 regiment, officered by white men, and as the 
 teachers in this house were the only other white 
 people in the place, the gentlemen naturally called 
 over pretty often. Her sister writes me : — 
 
 “ Of course if they came in school hours we 
 took them into the school-room. We often asked 
 our callers to hear classes, we had so many chil¬ 
 dren and our time was so full. 
 
 “ I remember one officer who had been sick, 
 and who often came over during his convales 
 cence. ’Dellie would always turn the conversa¬ 
 tion to religious subjects and often to his own 
 personal interest in the matter. If he came 
 during school hours she always had something 
 which she had saved for him to read — a religious 
 
ADELTHA. 
 
 17 
 
 poem or a passage from the Bible marked for him 
 to think about while we were busy. When the 
 lesson was over she would naturally talk with him 
 about the passage. This was the way she did 
 with every one who came to see us, and although 
 so few of them were religious men, they all seemed 
 to enjoy it; at any rate they did n’t stay away 
 because of it. We could not let these calls inter¬ 
 fere with our regular work, for there was too much 
 to do ; but I always felt that, with ’Dellie at least, 
 they were so many additional opportunities to work 
 for the Master. I think they all loved and re¬ 
 spected her for it and felt that religion with her 
 was a daily walking with Christ.” 
 
 She completed the school year, the war ended 
 that spring, and the next September she was mar¬ 
 ried from her father’s house to the colonel of this 
 regiment. He was a New York man, in thorough 
 Christian sympathy with herself, and they went to 
 W-, Pennsylvania, to live. 
 
 Eight or nine years of bustling activity, of 
 school teaching and travel, of missionary work, 
 care, responsibility, association, and influence with 
 large numbers, and now Adeltha found herself a 
 bride almost in solitude. 
 
 W-was then a thriving town on a branch of 
 
 the Susquehanna, the center of the lumber-trade 
 
 of the region ; but W- proper was more than 
 
 two miles away from the lonely bride. She was 
 
i8 
 
 ADELTHA. 
 
 keeping house on a by-road in a sparsely settled 
 suburb up the river. The farms of the stolid 
 Dutch farmers stretched off into the country. 
 Nearer the river were hastily built boarding-houses 
 for the workmen who were putting up an enor¬ 
 mous saw-mill for a New York man. 
 
 Very happily married to a man thoroughly con¬ 
 genial and in full sympathy with her religiously, 
 those first winter months were yet some of the 
 most trying ones of her life. There she was with 
 hardly an acquaintance, her husband away at the 
 mill all day, no society, no Sunday-school, no lit¬ 
 erary club, no sewing society even, no church — 
 nothing to do. If it had not been that the river 
 gave them two freshets that season and flooded 
 them out of the house twice, compelling them to 
 dry off and then go back and begin housekeeping 
 again, I don’t know what would have become of 
 her! There was no village here, remember, no 
 post-office. There was a stone church nearly a 
 mile away, out of repair and unused except on a 
 Sabbath morning, when an old school Presbyterian 
 minister would appear from some unknown quarter 
 and preach to the few people who remembered the 
 appointment ; then he would go off and in two 
 weeks come again in the afternoon, preach, and 
 ride away. Further on there was a Methodist 
 church with a still more sporadic ministration. 
 It was a community hard for a New Englander to 
 understand ; a place of dinner-parties given in 
 
ADELTHA. 
 
 T 9 
 
 great kitchens, where the table fairly groaned 
 with delicacies and wonders of cookery; where 
 the lady of the house often did not appear till 
 dinner-time, and then only in a calico dress with 
 collar omitted, to run and fetch from the oven and 
 pantry, while a friendly neighbor did the honors of 
 the table; a place where many of the thriving 
 elderly heads of families could not read or write. 
 It was not a neighborhood of infidelity or gross 
 wickedness, but of blank stupidity and full-fed 
 ignorance. 
 
 Neither the colonel nor his bride were people to 
 endure such a state of things long without an 
 effort to better it. The colonel started out one of 
 his very first Sundays with pictures, cards, and 
 papers, and walking up and down the roads he 
 asked every body he met to come next Sunday to an 
 unfinished part of the mill and sing. In the utter 
 dearth of any thing else to do quite a number 
 gathered, and before the sleepy old elders woke 
 up, the “new man” and his wife had a Sunday- 
 school well in hand. 
 
 The place grew rapidly. The saw-mill that 
 year was the largest in the world. Cottages were 
 built for the operatives and the new village strag¬ 
 gled all the way from the river to the church. 
 This church was repaired and a parsonage built 
 for the resident minister. Such settlements 
 always take on the impress of the first comer, 
 and the colonel and his wife put their mark here. 
 
20 
 
 ADEL THA, 
 
 The second winter they began to see the fruit of 
 their labors. A great revival spread through the 
 community and it seemed to follow in their foot¬ 
 steps. 
 
 There were Christian people on these scattered 
 farms when my friends went there, but they knew 
 nothing about church work. When I visited them 
 a year or two later, there was a church of one 
 hundred and twenty members. It was Adelthi 
 who held the prayer-meeting at her house, who 
 talked with inquirers — not with girls and women 
 only, but with boys and men, young and old. It 
 was she who followed up a woman of doubtful 
 character and gave her no rest till she cut loose 
 from her old ways and started life again as a 
 Christian woman. Taking a walk one day, she 
 saw a working-man following her. She had seen 
 him at the meetings, but did not know his name 
 even. He overtook her and began to talk. He 
 was in great distress of mind and wanted to be a 
 Christian, and Adeltha stood aghast as the man 
 poured into her ears a confession of a crime, a 
 state-prison offence, that under the pressure of 
 God’s Spirit he could keep no longer to himself. 
 In all that village, this pretty young woman, an 
 utter stranger, was the only one who impelled the 
 confession. 
 
 Nor were her personal efforts confined to out¬ 
 siders. She had living with her at this time a 
 young German girl, taken in pity from her 
 
ADELTHA. 
 
 21 
 
 drunken parents, and a colored boy, an army 
 waif that her husband had brought from the 
 south, both as ignorant as Hottentots. Under 
 her care and teaching both were hopefully con¬ 
 verted. Lizzie joined the church and turned out 
 well. The color-prejudice was very strong and 
 poor Billy was not allowed to join the church or 
 attend the village school. My friends gave him a 
 home and he walked to town every day to study 
 at a colored school, while he attended meetings 
 and worshiped humbly with people who looked 
 more closely at the color of his skin than at the 
 change in his character. Billy now is the Rev. 
 
 William -, of Virginia. Our kitchen girls 
 
 and hired men! some of us would have more 
 courage to start for China to-morrow than attempt 
 to do any good among them. 
 
 I remember another incident that may be men¬ 
 tioned here. Her father was not a church mem¬ 
 ber though a very excellent man, who supported 
 the church liberally, read his Bible, and brought 
 up his children religiously. Adeltha never doubted 
 his acceptance with God, but thought he lived 
 below his privileges. I myself remember seeing 
 her twice get out of bed, put on a loose dress and 
 slippers, and go downstairs to her father’s bedside 
 and pray with him, while I upstairs could hear 
 her tearful, trembling voice as she pleaded with 
 God for her father. Can any young woman think 
 of a harder thing to do than that ? She did not 
 
22 
 
 ADELTHA . 
 
 live to see it; but the time came when her father, 
 nearly eighty years old, publicly and joyfully took 
 upon himself the Christian vows and confessed 
 that for the first time in his life he “enjoyed his 
 religion.” 
 
 Let no one imagine her as a solemn or “ goody ” 
 woman. She was the life of every company. She 
 would play the piano or sing, start games among 
 the young folks, talk of recipes and patterns to 
 the mothers, and lend books to the young men, 
 and give the impression to every one of them that 
 her heart was overflowing with love to God. 
 
 “ I always put on my prettiest clothes when I 
 try to do any body any good,” she would say, “and 
 tie up my curls with a fresh ribbon. Those dread¬ 
 ful black caps that good old Aunt Newton wears 
 are enough to keep any young person at least from 
 wanting to be a Christian.” 
 
 But the beautiful life was nearly over. It only 
 remains to tell how this unselfish spirit, full of 
 work for others, was prepared by it to meet death 
 herself. There came after these years of failing 
 strength a sudden hemorrhage, a persistent 
 cough, and, in anxiety, she took her children and 
 came to her father’s home in Maine for the sum¬ 
 mer. She was wonderfully better, and went with 
 her sister and myself to Salem to attend the 
 American Board meetings in October. We went 
 into Boston for her to consult Dr. Cullis, with 
 
ADELTHA. 
 
 2 3 
 
 whom she was acquainted. I myself overheard 
 this conversation as, after a private interview, 
 he came to the door with her. 
 
 “ If people ask me if I have the consumption, 
 doctor, what shall I tell them ?” 
 
 “ What do you want to tell them ? ” he answered 
 gravely. 
 
 “I want to tell them the truth,” she said, in the 
 old piquant, half-saucy way. 
 
 “Then you must tell them that you have,” he 
 returned. 
 
 “But mother has coughed thirty years; why 
 can’t I ? ” 
 
 “You won’t cough three,” he said very slowly. 
 
 She bade him good-by calmly, and we went 
 home without a reference to the doctor’s verdict. 
 
 At first she was as unwilling to die as you or I 
 would have been. What! die ? she, a young 
 woman of thirty-one, with a pleasant home, 
 a doting husband, two little children. So much 
 to do, so much to enjoy ! It could not be ! It 
 should not be ! 
 
 Contrary to her usual custom she did not talk 
 much about it to any of us. But by the time the 
 winter was over she had settled the whole matter 
 between herself and God. 
 
 “The hardest thing,” she told me, “was to be 
 willing to leave my little boys. First I got willing 
 to leave them with God and to trust that they 
 would be as safe without me as with me. But to 
 
24 
 
 ADELTHA. 
 
 think that my little fellows that I loved so much 
 would miss me only a few weeks — would never 
 in all their lives think or care for me as any 
 thing more than a tender tradition — that was 
 the hardest wrench of all.” 
 
 She came again the next summer, as bright and 
 cheerful as ever, as full of life, walking some, rid¬ 
 ing a good deal ; if it had n’t been for the dreadful 
 cough we might have been deceived. She was 
 not. “ I think I may hold out another year, I am 
 so tough, but I want to be sure to have all my 
 sewing done for the children, because I may not 
 live through the winter, you know.” 
 
 But she came again the next summer, evidently 
 failing, but still so happy, so natural and uncon¬ 
 cerned that we were fairly staggered. I find 
 among my papers a letter written just before she 
 came. She was writing of some very unfavorable 
 symptoms that had developed, showing, as her doc¬ 
 tor told her, that her disease had taken hold of 
 other parts of her body as well as her lungs, and 
 she goes on to write : — 
 
 “ I wish I could tell you how little any of these 
 changes of body affect my mind. It seems to me, 
 as regards my own present or future, my heart 
 rests in eternal peace. I am not indifferent to life ; 
 life never looked to me so precious, but if the 
 Lord Jesus wants me to die in the coming months 
 I feel in every fiber of my being that that will be 
 the highest good for me, and that he will make it 
 
ADEL THA. 
 
 25 
 
 work for good to all the dear ones I shall leave be¬ 
 hind.” And then follows an inquiry about the 
 price of a black silk dress, for, as she said, “ I have 
 lived so much longer than I thought I should, I ’ve 
 worn out all my clothes.” Black silk dresses are 
 seldom discussed in such a spirit! And when she 
 showed me the new dress that summer, she said 
 simply, “ I sha’n’t want it after this year, and I've 
 had the skirt made long and I’ve put by enough 
 for a new waist so that sister Carrie can have a 
 nice dress out of it.” 
 
 From another letter I copy this : — 
 
 “ I have read and prayed much about the higher 
 Christian life this winter, and I have surely entered 
 into that life in spots (I don’t know how else to 
 express it). As I wrote before, as far as death is 
 concerned, I have entered into rest. I never think 
 of it without a thrill of triumph, and hundreds of 
 times this winter I have felt these victorious words, 
 
 ‘ O death, where is thy sting ! O grave, where is 
 thy victory ? ’ ‘ Thanks be to God which giveth us 
 the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.’ I have 
 trusted the whole thing to Christ, and I can’t feel 
 that death will be any thing to me but meeting him 
 face to face whom not having seen I love. When 
 I hear ministers in their sermons speak of the 
 ‘cold waters of the Jordan of death,’ or the 
 ‘darkness of the grave,’ I smile, for I feel in my 
 heart that there is no coldness or darkness, no 
 shadow even before me; it is all sunshine. Now 
 
26 
 
 ADELTHA. 
 
 I have no doubt there is some ‘ temperament ’ in 
 this, but there is more grace. For two years ago 
 it seemed very sad to me to think of dying before 
 I got to be an old woman, and to die young seemed 
 like a cutting off, a blasting, and now I think it 
 must be a new birth into a fuller life. When I 
 realize that through this victory that God has given 
 me, I am so much happier in view of an early 
 death than the majority of Christians, I feel that 
 I want the same overcoming faith in regard to 
 every thing in life. I can’t say yet that I have no 
 burden about my boys, but I expect to say it. 
 There is so much trash written about the higher 
 life and perfection that it is very confusing; but I 
 mean the life that Jesus meant when he said, ‘ If 
 ye abide in me,’ and what Paul meant when he 
 said, ‘ Christ liveth in me.’ ” 
 
 She literally set her house in order, told us all 
 what we were to have as keepsakes — mind you 
 this was not when she was on her dying-bed, but 
 well enough to visit, to go to church occasionally, 
 and to ride about. “ This is my last visit home 
 and I want to make the most of it. I am sure I 
 shall be in a better home by another summer,” she 
 would say, as simply and with no more emotion 
 than if she was getting ready to move into another 
 street ; so simply that she fairly compelled us to 
 receive such statements without a word of dissent 
 or a tear. She wrote to all her friends and made 
 sure that the unconverted ones had at least a mes^ 
 
ADELTIIA. 
 
 27 
 
 sage. She talked with us of the journey to a bet¬ 
 ter land she was soon to take, and she certainly 
 gave me the impression that she dreaded death 
 less than getting to New York alone with her 
 children. 
 
 She left Maine early in the fall and failed 
 rapidly after her return to Pennsylvania. Her last 
 letter to me was written in November, and while 
 the most of it is like a glimpse of heaven, in one 
 or two expressions the old human way of looking 
 at things shows itself, as in this : — 
 
 “ All my friends, children of God, are praying 
 for me, that I may get well. Sometimes I feel 
 afraid God may be over-persuaded. This sounds 
 strange, but when I pray about it I can ’t help say¬ 
 ing, ‘ Dear Lord, don’t mind their desires if thou 
 wouldst rather I should come to heaven now.’ ” 
 
 In another place she says : “ I wish it was as 
 easy to live near to God in health as in sickness.” 
 
 In the two months of exceeding suffering that 
 followed, her husband wrote me : “ She lives con¬ 
 stantly in the presence of Jesus and -she says no 
 one can tell how real every thing about heaven has 
 become. And her cheerfulness and thoughtful 
 care of every body but herself dries all tears from 
 the eyes of her friends.” 
 
 She chose a spot in the cemetery for her body 
 to be laid — a breezy, sunny slope, where Ploward 
 and Harry, her little boys, might come and play 
 and not feel gloomy. 
 
28 
 
 ADELTHA. 
 
 Her father and mother were with her at the 
 last. She kept her bed but six or eight days and 
 was released from pain and entered into her 
 Saviour’s presence in January. 
 
 I remember the day the telegram came which 
 announced that ’Dellie had gone home. Her sister 
 and I sat and talked together of her. We could 
 not weep ; there was nothing to weep for. “ I feel 
 as if she was nearer now than when she was 
 alive,” her sister said. And when her parents 
 returned the next week and told us of her last 
 hours, if we shed tears, they were those of 
 rejoicing. She had made heaven so real that 
 we could not mourn. There was nothing to 
 mourn for. 
 
 There are two or three very obvious lessons 
 from such a life as this. 
 
 I. Fruitfulness of a short life. We expect to 
 see aged saints, but hardly look for them among 
 young married women. Her work was mainly 
 done between eighteen and thirty. She died at 
 thirty-three, and yet scores will arise to call her 
 blessed. 
 
 II. A woman who is really in earnest about 
 serving God will find opportunities wherever she 
 is placed, and in the midst of her commonest 
 activities. 
 
 III. The secret of her power over others was 
 God’s power over her. The Bible and prayer were 
 
ADELTHA . 
 
 2$ 
 
 her never-failing fountain of grace. A tremen¬ 
 dously energetic woman, a real “ Yankee driver ; ” 
 never idle for a minute, yet in the busiest days she 
 neither omitted nor cut short her time of com¬ 
 munion with God. It was not only her source of 
 strength, but her remedy for perplexity. One 
 winter she had a family of ten — an invalid 
 mother-in-law; a raw girl in the kitchen ; Billy, 
 the black boy ; a disagreeable and uncongenial rel¬ 
 ative, and the school-teacher, to board, “ It takes 
 a great deal of grace to live this winter,” she 
 said. “ When Sarah aggravates me to death, I just 
 shut my mouth and go upstairs and pray.” 
 
 IV. Religion does not change the temperament 
 but uses it to make different types of Christians. 
 If she had tried to be any thing but herself, what 
 a miserable failure she would have been. The gay, 
 light-hearted, volatile girl, fond of pretty clothes, 
 of the boys, of a good time, when God had taken 
 hold of her in every part of her nature, became 
 the buoyant, courageous, sympathetic, charming 
 Christian that won hearts with a word and held 
 them with a smile. 
 
 V. Small beginnings of Christian purpose are 
 to be encouraged, not despised. If it is truly a 
 heavenly seed with life within itself, God will take 
 care that it grows. He will send just such cir¬ 
 cumstances and such discipline as will water its 
 roots and nourish its branches. He will decide, 
 too, what kind of fruit it shall bear. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
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