Is there another Miss Fiske in your country? We can hardly believe
it. I hope that I shall see her again, but it is difficult for me to
expect it.
It is very pleasant for me to write to friends, and especially to my
own dear mother, Miss Fiske. I should never be weary if I wrote to
her every day; but I thought that this time she would like to have
me write to you, and I trust that you will live to receive it.
Please give my love to Martha, and also to Mrs. Stoddard and Sarah,
and tell them that our hearts are with them.
From your granddaughter, whom you have not seen,
RAHEEL.
No reader of the Bible needs any description of Oriental mourning
for the dead. The rent garments and sackcloth (2 Sam. iii. 31), loud
weeping and wailing (ver. 32), protracted lamentation as for Jacob
(Gen. 1.10 and 11), and for Moses (Deut. xxxiv. 8), and the hired
mourning women (Jer. ix. 17, and Matt. ix. 23), were to be found
nowhere in greater perfection than among the Nestorians. It is very
difficult for us, in this land, to realize the force of such habits;
but it required much grace to break over them; and even now, when
the Christian heart grows cold, it is apt to return to the old ways.
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