A MEMOIR OF MRS. MARY WINSLOW, ARRANGED FROM HER Correspondence, Diary, and Thoughts. BY HER SON OCTAVIUS WINSLOW, D. D., 19.66 AUTHOR OF D.D., 99.66 “MIDNIGHT HARMONIES,' PERSONAL DECLENSION AND REVIVAL, THE PRECIOUS "In her had Nature bounteously combined The tenderest bosom with the strongest mind; I view the Mother and the Saint in one, And pay beyond the homage of a Son."-Knight. "Her children arise up, and call her blessed.”—Prov. xxxi. 28. NEW YORK: ROBERT CARTER & BROTHERS, No. 530 BROADWAY. PREFACE. THERE are few literary tasks more delicate in conception, difficult in design, or responsible in execution, than that of composing a parent's life—that parent a MOTHER. Under ordinary circumstances, to portray a character distinguished for its preeminent excellence, strongly developed in some of its essential features, and remarkable for a certain idiosyncrasy which assigns to it a place in the portrait gallery peculiarly and impressively its own, would impose upon the delineator the greatest caution; lest the imagination, enamoured of its study, should be allowed unduly to control the judgment, and thereby an ideal rather than a truthful picture should be the result. But, to sketch a character which, from childhood, we have filially loved and venerated, and, in later life, have looked upon with a deepening admiration, bordering upon a feeling of religious awe;—a character, too, sanctified in an eminent degree by the grace of God, demands the possession of powers to which the writer can prefer but a feeble claim. A MOTHER ! who has not felt the exquisite tenderness of her love, the magic power of her influence, the sacred reverence of her name? Has she weaknesses?—what feeling heart could unveil them? |