I had, after leaving home, an attack of that terrible pain, of which I
have told you, and believed myself very near death. It became a serious
question whether, if God should so please, I could feel willing to die
there alone, for I was among entire strangers. I never enjoyed more of
His presence than that night when, sick and sad and full of pain, I felt
it sweet to put myself in His hands to be disposed of in His own way.

The attack referred to in this letter resembled _angina pectoris_, a
disease to which for many years she was led to consider herself liable.
Whatever it may have been, its effect was excruciating. "Mother was
telling me the other day," she wrote to a friend, "that in her long life
she had never seen an individual suffer more severe bodily pain than she
had often tried to relieve in me. I remember scores of such hours of
real agony." In the present instance the attack was doubtless brought
on, in part at least, by mental agitation. "No words," she wrote a few
months later, "can describe the anguish of my mind the night I left
home; it seemed to me that all the agony I had ever passed through was
condensed into a small space, and I certainly believe that I should die,
if left to a higher degree of such pain."

RICHMOND, _September 30, 1840._

About twelve o'clock, when it was as dark as pitch, we were all ordered
to prepare for a short walk. In single file then out we went. It seems
that a bridge had been burned lately, and so we were all to go round on
foot to another train of cars. There were dozens of bright, crackling
bonfires lighted at short intervals all along, and as we wound down
narrow, steep and rocky pathways, then up steps which had been rudely
cut out in the side of the elevated ground, and as far as we could see
before us could watch the long line of moving figures in all varieties