time, some of the bitterness of that month of bereavement.

'I have this day received,' she writes to Miss Janet, 'the
melancholy news of my dear babys' deaths. My heart is like to
break for my dear Mrs. Stevenson. O may she be supported on this
trying occasion! I hope her other three babys will be spared to
her. O, Miss Smith, did I think when I parted from my sweet babys
that I never was to see them more?' 'I received,' she begins her
next, 'the mournful news of my dear Jessie's death. I also
received the hair of my three sweet babys, which I will preserve as
dear to their memorys and as a token of Mr. and Mrs. Stevenson's
friendship and esteem. At my leisure hours, when the children are
in bed, they occupy all my thoughts, I dream of them. About two
weeks ago I dreamed that my sweet little Jessie came running to me
in her usual way, and I took her in my arms. O my dear babys, were
mortal eyes permitted to see them in heaven, we would not repine
nor grieve for their loss.'

By the 29th of February, the Reverend John Campbell, a man of
obvious sense and human value, but hateful to the present
biographer, because he wrote so many letters and conveyed so little
information, summed up this first period of affliction in a letter
to Miss Smith: 'Your dear sister but a little while ago had a full
nursery, and the dear blooming creatures sitting around her table
filled her breast with hope that one day they should fill active
stations in society and become an ornament in the Church below.
But ah!'

Near a hundred years ago these little creatures ceased to be, and
for not much less a period the tears have been dried. And to this