NEW YORK, Nov. 14.
My Very Dear Friend:
Your letter to Mrs. Maria Child has attracted my attention and induced on my
part the action indicated in the enclosed slip
from the N. Y. Tribune. You will see that I need your autograph. Please
address me immediately. Give yourself no further anxiety as to the needy ones
left behind. Warm and loving hearts by thousands at this moment are ready to
aid them. You little knew, my friend, when you gave me your likeness, to what
good account it would be turned; and I, alas! how little could I then dream of
your impending fate, or in that hour guess the motives that prompted you to
enjoin upon me the strictest caution as to exposing the photograph to be seen.
Did your young friend perish? God be with you, my brave heart! For one animated
by such faith as yours pity were reproach. Instead of pity I therefore tender
you, O my friend, sympathy and a like faith with your own.
God and his eternal
heavens are above us! Eternity is ours! So that, in His sight who shall judge
us at the last we stand approved. Life matters not, and death matters not; and
whether the hours of this day, or the morrow, be shortened, is of little
account; for the shorter life is, the longer eternity is; and which is best for
us depends wholly upon God; and in which we can best serve Him it is for God
alone to say.
Your courage, my
brother, challenges the admiration of men; your faith, the admiration of
angels. Be steadfast to the end! Be patient! farewell! I am yours in Christ
"for the life that now is, and for that which is to come." Farewell!
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