"With this please receive eight letters and seventeen full postals
from our dear departed friend, Miss Sarah Ellis, of your city,
whose face I never saw, but whose correspondence was to me a great
pleasure. Her personal friendship must have been a real blessing to
you and her immediate friends. She was able to be a very active
worker for the cause which lay so near her heart, and was at the
same time so perfectly willing to let others believe what they can.
I will send all I have of hers and let you select what you desire.
There is not even a postal card among them on which there is not
some small or large trace of her noble, generous, kindly nature."
A young man in Ohio, writing Miss Ellis about some revival scenes in his
town, makes this comment, which is good and true enough to settle the
"leaven" idea once for all.
"If you had seen all this as I have, you would hardly think it time
for a civilized organization like the Unitarians to cease fighting
the great evil and wait for the leaven to work.
"_The Unitarians are themselves a portion of the leaven, and unless
they work there is so much of the leaven idle._"
A Christian minister with whom Miss Ellis has corresponded two years or
more, and who expects to enter Harvard Divinity School, in sending her
letters writes:--
"... I send such as I can get at, preferring to let you make any
suitable selections or extracts they may offer. I shall be pleased
to have them returned, as you mention, when you have used them. I
may add that my correspondence with Miss Ellis on all matters
connected with religion, Unitarianism, etc., was in all respects
most pleasant, satisfactory, and profitable to me. The careful
skill with which she divined the exact want of a correspondent and
sent the appropriate word by tract or letter to supply it, bespoke
a wisdom and experience deeper than casual letters may reveal. And
continued correspondence served thus to inspire a greater esteem
and confidence in the judgment expressed."