If device for an old Latin motto were asked,
No invention would need to be very much tasked;
For the "multum in parvo" _you_ safely might stand,
With book, needle, or pen, ever found in your hand.
A little, wee body with strong, earnest will,
That steadily works with the force of a mill;
A mind quite untiring, whatever it do,
Its manifold ends with good heed to pursue:
Hands busy and strong play deftly their part,
And these all controlled by a good, honest heart.
Bright indeed looked Sallie's future in those days. A year or two more
at school, then a return to the loved mother and the beautiful home, and
a "coming out" into the brilliant world with all the advantages
attending wealth and position. But the clouds were already gathering
which in coming years were to darken for her in quick succession the
sunshine of earthly prosperity. She was called home from school by the
illness of her mother. The mother died, leaving Sallie the oldest
daughter at home, to fill her place as best she might to five little
brothers and sisters.
Her sister says: "Our dear mother's death was the turning-point in
Sallie's life. She was so shrinking, sensitive, and tender by nature, no
one could fully understand her but a mother who had watched the hidden
beauties of her character expand from infancy to girlhood."
The mother's memory was fondly cherished, her loss deeply mourned, all
Miss Ellis's life. Over the dying bed of the worn and weary woman of
fifty smiled down the radiant face of the mother, painted when a young,
blooming girl. Among Miss Ellis's papers was found a manuscript volume
of eighty-one pages of selections, copied in her clear, firm
handwriting, index of the spirit's strength. It is headed, "Crumbs of
Comfort for the Afflicted." The selections are from the Bible, sermons,
hymns, and poems,--all breathing of religious trust and help in
grief,--a beautiful and touching collection. The first page reads,--
"Begun in Nov. 1870.
"These selections are made in memory of my dear mother, who was
called away many years since, and through whose death I was led to
think of a higher life,--the _true_ life of the soul.
"'Oh, I believe there is no _away_; that no love, no life, goes
ever from us; it goes as He went, that it may come again, deeper
and closer and surer, and be with us always, even unto the end of
the world' (_Patience Strong's Outings_)."
One of the selections is an anonymous poem, "The Strength of the
Lonely." On one page Miss Ellis had written (signed "S. E."), "I can but
believe that God allows a mother still to watch over and care for her
family when he takes her from this world, and in our affliction that he
draws us to himself, and to Jesus as our guide to him, through her
spiritual influence, just as, while upon earth, he permitted her to be
his instrument to lead and guide us in all that is good. All children
too, even the youngest, are God's instruments for good, and their
ministries cease not with their earthly life. The departed are with us
everywhere, through our daily duties,--
"In the loneliest hour, in the crowd, they are nigh us."
A year or two after the mother's death Sallie joined the Unitarian
Church, being baptized by Rev. A. A. Livermore, of whom she writes in a
letter: "Rev. A. A. Livermore was settled here from the time I was
fourteen to twenty-one, and he formed my religious character." Fitting
indeed was it that he who has trained so many young men for the ministry
should dedicate to God's service this young woman, also destined to be
his minister to many souls. An old lady in the church remembers seeing
Sallie go up to be baptized, leading a little brother by each hand, all
the little children being baptized at the same time. To one of her
nature, the vows then taken were a most sacred, real consecration of her
whole self to God,--vows to be nobly fulfilled in the life.