INTRODUCTION.

THE private papers of a deceased friend can scarcely be examined without emotion. Those left by Sophia Denham were entrusted to me by those most closely allied to her, accompanied by an earnest request that I would employ them in preparing a brief memoir of her. They now lie before me. The penmanship of some is that of a little girl learning to write; and of others such as might be expected from one who was in the constant use of the pen. Some of the writing is in pencil, and has evidently been written in haste, when other duties were pressing; whilst other portions have been penned at leisure. Here are records of her conflicts and victories; of her joys and sorrows; of her aspirations, and failures, and successes; of all that belonged to the life of God in her soul, and of that life as manifested in her daily conduct. Here are also letters, seeking counsel or imparting it; asking for sympathy or tendering it; letters concerning daily tasks or the struggle for eternal life: letters addressed to her earliest friends, or to those whose esteem and love she gained by her rectitude, and truthfulness, and affection. Here are papers written by the departed one under many and various circumstances. She has left us.

Her spirit has entered the unseen world.

B

She lives now among those mysteries so completely hidden from our senses. She shares, we doubt not, the blessedness prepared for all who overcome. She is yonder. We hear the voice no longer, nor see her features, nor hold any direct communion with her. But the words traced by her pen are still with us, and are henceforth invested with a degree of sacredness. We can scarcely look upon them without seriousness of feeling almost amounting to awe.

We are reminded that speedily all that appertains to us will be at the disposal of others. Our treasures, of smaller or of greater value, will no longer be under our control. They will be examined, and we shall not be so much as present to express any wish concerning them. They may, or may not, have been left in the condition we should have placed them had we known at the time that the arrangement would prove, so far as we are concerned, the final one. Soon we shall have closed the drawer, or box, or desk, wherein we have placed whatsoever seems to be ours peculiarly and beyond everything else, and it will be ours no longer. To arrange the contents of the drawer, or box, or desk, does not appear a difficult task, yet we shall never more perform it. Some other hand than ours will do so, when it is done, and some other eye than ours will next rest upon what we have placed therein, and another mind will be impressed, somehow, by what is found therein. Perhaps most of us shrink, more or less, from this scrutiny of our stores. It does seem as though they ought always to belong to us, and that we would rather they were not turned over and examined by any one, however dear. Such examination appears a sort of intrusion. Perhaps we feel this,