1870.] HIS SISTER ANNA. 305 



go out for the first time to early Communion : and on Monday- 

 he wrote to his sister Mary : " Next after Herbert, it is you 

 for whom most we feel the stroke. What a support and right 

 hand has been withdrawn from you, perhaps even you yourself 

 can hardly know.* . . . While your great thoughts were on 

 great works, she was bearing the weight of the foundations. 

 ... I don't know whom she was like : she was the Anna 

 to us all. Never can I forget how she quietly placed herself 

 at my side, when I was alone in the prostration that . . . 

 caused me, and how gently cheerful, how tenderly loving were 

 her tones and looks. How she made her own all my little 

 ways, and then quietly turned them her way. What power 

 that sweet gentleness has over us passionate men ! She could 

 have turned me any way she wished, when I should have been 

 restive under others. . . . Naturally the early times are deepest 

 in my mind. . . . How you three sisters toiled, that we boys 

 might be well prepared for life ; for which I am ever grateful to 

 you, and sweetly cherish the hope of telling Anna so, in the 

 next world. Somehow I thought that either you or I would be 

 the first to meet our mother." He wrote to me (November 18) : 

 " From the first tidings, the words of the English Collect 

 have been for ever ringing in my mind as applicable to her — 

 6 O Lord, of whose only gift it cometh, that Thy people do unto 

 Thee true and laudable service,' and the hymn ' Put a cheerful 

 courage on.' Truly her life was an immense blessing to all of 

 us, and very, very sweet to look back upon, and to look forward 

 to. I take heaven to be a very happy place, if there are such 

 spirits there ! Of course, it all seems like a dream : we can 

 hardly believe that we shall receive no more of those delightful 

 letters. . . . Alas ! now, that I have kept so few of them. I 

 have such a dread of inflicting on survivors the labour and time- 

 work of past-letter reading, that I make a practice of destroying 



* In the "Voices of the Spirit," printed by Mary, 1877, just before her 

 death, are several little pieces she wrote for Anna, from her eleventh year. 

 In her last philanthropic institution, the Boys' Home, there is a brass tablet 

 with this inscription: — "To my beloved sister, Anna, my fellow- worker 

 in the cause of humanity, this Home for houseless boys is dedicated. 

 April 14, 1872." 



X 



