15^ [Nov. 20, 



Berne. She was then twenty years old. For some years she lived in 

 outward comfort, not called on for serious exertions beyond the cares for 

 her children and the guidance of her family affairs. But in 184(5 some 

 speculations in which her husband had engaged failed ; all his property 

 except the estate on which they lived was lost, and from this time forth 

 she lived a life of deep and constant anxiety, and under the necessity for 

 unremitting exertion. They both thought that their home on the estate 

 might be made remunerative by turning it into a private asylum for 

 insane patients, and into this work Mrs. Seiler threw herself with the 

 energy and ardor of her nature, making herself the sympathetic friend of 

 those whose mental maladies were of the milder type, and having great in- 

 fluence over the violent. At one time, after watching successfully for 

 some months a case of suicidal mania, the patient escaped her and was 

 found to have hung herself. Mrs. Seiler, after an hour of heroic effort, 

 succeeded in restoring the life that was apparently extinct. At another 

 time, she was badly injured by lifting an insane woman, and carried that 

 injury and the suffering it occasioned to her dying day. But she was 

 never one to dwell upon personal sorrows and pains, or talk about them; 

 nor could she help away her griefs by personal resentment, a poor way 

 for any of us to be helped. But she went on courageously with the work 

 appointed to her, only finding her eyes and her heart more open and sym- 

 pathetic with her sufferers, aud her hands more active. 



In the year 1847 a famine came upon Switzerland, not due to failure of 

 crops, but to political causes. The French invaded Switzerland in prep- 

 aration for the Franco-Austrian War, blockaded all the outlets, and 

 the price of provisions became so high that the very poor had no means to 

 supply their wants. At Langenthal aud in many other places, they fell 

 dead in the streets from starvation. Mrs. Seller's heart ached well-nigh 

 to bursting with the miseries she saw around her — the dead and dying in 

 the streets, the wretchedness of those who survived. Night and day she 

 pondered on their distresses and thought over plans for their relief. But 

 all her plans required money and she had none. One night iu her agony 

 she prayed, " Oh, my God, send me power to help my poor dying people ! 

 Oh, my God, show me the way!" "I prayed all night upon my 

 knees," she said, "and by daylight my mind was clear." 



She rose early, and having attended to her family and her patients, she 

 went to the clergyman of the village, to ask for his sympathy and ap- 

 proval. When she had finished an ardent appeal to him, he said to her 

 in a deep and solemn tone which she was fond of imitating, "Head the 

 Bible to those dying people." And when she said, " But they are starv- 

 ing to death; they must have food," he only repeated mechanically, " Bead 

 the Bible to those dying people, every one." When she declined to do 

 this, and rose impatiently to go, he said, in the same sepulchral tone, " When 

 that great day comes when the Judge shall separate the sheep from the 

 goats, where willow be?" "That does not concern me at all," said Mrs. 

 Seiler, " whether I shall go with sheeps or goats. I was thinking of some- 



