 her
class, and my sister, whose seat was near hers, writes: "Every Sunday
she would say, 'I am trying to _live_ a Christian; I wish to die a
Christian and see what the end of a Christian life will be.' On the
last Sunday she met the class, which was just one week and four days
before she died--she seemed if possible, more devoted than usual and
her words impressed me much. I did not think then that I should never
hear her speak in class again."

My mother had read the Scriptures with great care and was not fully
persuaded that infant baptism was therein taught, and although a
Methodist, she hesitated to give her children to God and the church in
this ordinance. Of her six children not one was baptised in infancy,
nor did she teach them to "say prayers." It required great faith to
depart from so general a custom, but being taught of God, she dared to
do it. The reader will observe in my brother's poem, which actually
reproduces the scenes of our childhood, that there is no picture of a
child with clasped hands kneeling down and lisping his evening prayer
by his mother's knee. No such picture was common there. Early in the
days of her life as a mother she abandoned the custom. Prayerless the
six children went to bed, and prayerless they went to their daily
tasks, and this not through negligence but through principle. She
thought "saying prayers" a grave species of trifling; and, as father
worked sometimes nights and sometimes days, regularity in family
prayer, if desired, could not be had. I am not certain that _it was
desired_. Religion, not even in its forms, was forced upon the
children but on the contrary it was rendered so attractive, that the
children of that household would crowd around that mother in the
evening and tease her to tell them a story. The story would always be
told just before bed-time and would be likely to end with a solemn
appeal to our consciences, the reading of a chapter from the old
family Bible, a prayer and then all the children were hurried to bed.
This was not a nightly occurrence, 