1 86 1 -6 2.] UNIVERSITIES MISSION. 303 



are gone, that the slander which, unfortunately, reached 

 her ears from missionary gossips and others had an in- 

 fluence on me in allowing her to come, before we were 

 fairly on Lake Nyassa. A doctor of divinity said, when 

 her devotion to her family was praised : ' Oh, she is no 

 good, she is here because her husband cannot live with 

 her.' The last day will tell another tale." 



To his daughter Agnes he writes, after the account of 

 her death: "... Dear Nannie, she often thought of you, 

 and when once, from the violence of the disease, she was 

 delirious, she called out, ' See ! Agnes is falling down a 

 precipice/ May our Heavenly Saviour, who must be 

 your Father and Guide, preserve you from falling into 

 the gulf of sin over the precipice of temptation. . . . 

 Dear Agnes, I feel alone in the world now, and what will 

 the poor dear baby do without her mamma ? She often 

 spoke of her, and sometimes burst into a flood of tears, 

 just as I now do in taking up and arranging the things 

 left by my beloved partner of eighteen years. ... I bow 

 to the Divine hand that chastens me. God grant that 

 I may learn the lesson He means to teach ! All she 

 told you to do she now enforces, as if beckoning from 

 heaven. Nannie, dear, meet her there. Don't lose the 

 crown of joy she now weal's, and the Lord be gracious to 

 you in all things. You will now need to act more and 

 more from a feeling of responsibility to Jesus, seeing He 

 has taken away one of your guardians. A right straight- 

 forward woman was she. No crooked way ever hers, and 

 she could act with decision and energy when required. 

 I pity you on receiving this, but it is the Lord. — Your 

 sorrowing and lonely father." 



Letters of the like tenor were written to every in- 

 timate friend. It was a relief to his heart to pour itself 

 out in praise of her who was gone, and in some cases, 

 when he had told all about the death, he returns to 

 speak of her life. A letter to Sir Roderick Murchison 



