A poor widow, of good sense and discretion, accompanied her as friend
and housekeeper, and two trusty men-servants, members of the Society of
Friends. Among the many singular manifestations of strong faith and
religious zeal, connected with the settlement of this country, few are
more remarkable than the voluntary separation of this girl of eighteen
from a wealthy home and all the pleasant associations of childhood, to
go to a distant and thinly inhabited country to fulfill what she deemed
a religious duty. And the humble, self-sacrificing faith of the parents,
in giving up their child, with such reverent tenderness for the
promptings of her own conscience, has in it something sublimely
beautiful, if we look at it in its own pure light. The parting took
place with more love than words can express, and yet without a tear on
either side. Even during the long and tedious voyage, Elizabeth never
wept. She preserved a martyr-like cheerfulness to the end.
The house prepared for her reception stood in a clearing of the forest,
three miles from any other dwelling. She arrived in June, when the
landscape was smiling in youthful beauty; and it seemed to her as if the
arch of heaven was never before so clear and bright, the carpet of the
earth never so verdant. As she sat at her window and saw evening close
in upon her in that broad forest home, and heard for the first time the
mournful notes of the whippowil and the harsh scream of the jay in the
distant woods, she was oppressed with a sense of vastness, of infinity,
which she never before experienced, not even on the ocean.
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