sacrifice. Thy blessing!

Farewell, my mother, and ye loved ones of the same hearth-stone !"

In July, 1846, she was married to Dr. Judson, and with him departed for Burmah. Soon after her arrival, she began to experience the perils of the heralds of the cross. She was robbed by the barbarians of all her gifts and souvenirs, which the affection of friends had consecrated; her clothes, and the books she had taken with her-all fell a prey to their rapacious grasp. It was in the midst of these scenes, on the very spot of her predecessor's sorrows and trials, she wrote the memoir now in the reader's hands. It is a worthy pendant to the portrait of the noble-minded Mrs. Ann H. Judson; nor can it be doubted that "Fanny Forester," should the good Lord of the Harvest spare her life, will reap a rich reward for her self-sacrifice, and leave to posterity a name equally fragrant with that of the sainted women who have gone before her.

The following touching poem may not be withheld, written by Mrs. Judson, since her settlement at Maulmain, and addressed to her father. It is derived from the same source as that to which the reader is indebted for the above information-the New York Recorder;

"A welcome for thy child, father,
A welcome give to day;

Although she may not come to thee,
As when she went away;

Though never in her olden nest,

Is she to fold her wing,

And live again the days when first
She learned to fly and sing.

Oh! happy were those days, father,
When gathering round thy knee,

Seven sons and daughters called thee, sire ;-
We come again but three :

The grave has claimed thy loveliest ones,
And sterner things than death

Have left a shadow on thy brow,
A sigh upon thy breath.

And one-one of the three, father,
Now comes to thee to claim

Thy blessing on another lot,

Upon another name.

Where tropic suns for ever burn,

Far over land and wave,

The child, whom thou hast loved, would make

Her hearth-stone and her grave.

Thou'lt never wait again, father,

Thy daughter's coming tread;
She ne'er will see thy face on earth,—

So count her with thy dead;

But in the land of life and love,

Not sorrowing as now,

She'll come to thee, and come, perchance,

With jewels on her brow.

Perchance!-I do not know, father,

If any part be given

My erring hand, among the guides,

Who point the way to heaven;

But it would be a joy untold

Some erring foot to stay;

Remember this, when gathering round,

Ye for the exile pray.

pass

And gaze, through tears, on that dear roof,
My shelter nevermore.

Newmarket House, Oct. 28, 1848.

PREFACE.

Ir has occurred to me, in glancing over the little narrative I have prepared, that those friends of Mrs. Judson who have kindly furnished copies of her verses, may be disappointed at seeing so few of them selected for use. Readers of another class will regret that more of the minute particulars of her missionary life are not given; as the precise number of schools in which she was at different times engaged, her efforts for individual conversion, &c., &c. Others again, will recollect the letters which were so interesting to them, and, forgetting that very few can read them with their eyes and hearts will wonder that such pleasant memorials of her they loved should not be placed within the reach of all.

To each of these I would reply, that in taking a view of her whole life, my first aim has been to preserve the nice balance, the faultless symmetry of her character; to present her as she appeared under all circumstances the Woman and the Christian. And, in the second place, I have thought it not amiss to make some sacrifices to brevity. She had a poetic eye and heart—a genial love for the flowers, the streams, the stars, the beautiful in nature, and whatever is pure and elevated in man-but she was not a mere poetess.

As a Christian, she was most ardently attached to the service which occupied so large a portion of her life; but it would be unjust to represent her in the light of a mere missionary. If she had kept a journal, however, many interesting circumstances, now buried in the grave with her, would doubtless have been elicited; and her missionary course might have been more distinctly traced.

The peculiar character of her letters has been mentioned elsewhere; but in recurring to them here, it may be proper to remark, that names and dates have been usually omitted, because the quotations are so short and frequent that their insertion would give the page the air of a chronological table. For brevity's sake, I have taken the liberty, in two or three instances, of incorporating a quotation from one letter with some sentence from another on the same subject; and have sometimes dropped a clause having no direct bearing on the point which I wished to elucidate. Entire letters, however, stand precisely as she wrote them.

Yet another reason may be added for having introduced her poems so sparingly. Unfinished as they were, they did not meet the approval of her own cultivated taste; and, after she left America, none were ever published by her permission. My selections have usually been made with reference to some circumstance in her life; and among the various copies of these in my possession, I have of course preferred that which seemed in my own judgment the best.

Rangoon, June 1st, 1847.