Page:Letters of Life.djvu/318

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LETTERS OF LIFE.

copal Church, that she had never partaken of its ordinances, I conversed with her, and found she was desirous of receiving both baptism and confirmation. After interviews of examination with our clergyman, she was accepted, and I stood her sponsor in the baptismal rite; after which she was duly confirmed, and partook of the communion with great reverence and solemnity. Afterwards I found that she considered my agency in this cause as a personal obligation; and sometimes, when I expressed sympathy if she had sustained some unusually arduous labor, would say, in her animated manner: "Oh! that's nothing, ma'am. Did not you stand for me when I was baptized?" Poor, dear Ann Prince! Her gratitude seemed unbounded.

Her style of cooking and operations in the laundry were unexceptionable; and she was an excellent adjunct on any short journey, taking excellent care of baggage in the cars, and packing and unpacking with great address and rapidity. In her own costume she was plain and old-fashioned, and of scrupulous neatness, delighting in clean checked aprons, the more because she saw they were pleasing to me. She hailed the coming of our guests as the friends of her friends, not regarding any additional toil that might ensue. She was a close observer of the manners of our visitants, and had remarkable powers of setting things in a ludicrous light. Some faults she had, arising from an