"Your papers, sermons, etc., are regularly received, and I wish I
could make you understand the great comfort they are to me,
particularly the sermons. Anything pertaining to the future life
holds me spell-bound till the last word is read. The Unitarian
ideas and beliefs, so far as I know, find echo in my heart; and I
always feel comforted and soothed, as it were, with all I have read
and understood. I attend the Presbyterian Church here, because I
think it is better to attend some church regularly; and I am very
fond of this minister socially. There has been for ten days or more
an evangelist holding a union meeting in our church, and a night or
two ago I went to hear him. The only feeling excited in my heart
was one of pity that all persons could not be taught the love of
God instead of being frightened into a nervous fear. I assure you,
I feel it a privilege to correspond with you, and find myself
wishing in my heart that you knew me thoroughly, what I have been,
and what I am by nature, education, and social standing. I feel
that we women of the South are to be seen at home and known to be
understood by our Northern sisters."
The following are some of Miss Ellis's letters to a radical of the
radicals, an old gentleman in Boston, one of Theodore Parker's old
congregation, who sent much literature out under her direction, and
contributed Theodore Parker's "Prayers," and his new volume of sermons,
to her loan library.