burn, compared with its former brightness.

The greatest source of retrograding in the divine life is
unfaithfulness in the performance of known duty. Many of the clouds
that overshadow us we bring by withholding more than is meet, and it
tends to poverty of soul. The talent committed to our charge is to be
occupied, and is always doubled when occupied by its possessor; but,
as I saw many, in whom I had confidence as living a quiet Christian
life--and this was more congenial to my natural feeling--I reached the
conclusion to make my Bible and secret prayer my companions as long as
I lived, and a Christian life in the Society of my parents' choice.

At the early age of sixteen I became acquainted with Charles Haviland,
Jr., a young man who was acquainted with the Savior's pardoning love,
whose father and mother were both acknowledged ministers in the
Society of Friends. From him I accepted a proposition of marriage, and
on the 3d of 11th month, 1825, our marriage was consummated at
Friends' Meeting, in Lockport, Niagara County, New York, according to
the usage of Friends. The following Spring we commenced housekeeping
in our own home, in Boyalton Township, nine miles east of Lockport,
and my dear parents and family removed to Michigan Territory. Although
parting from them was severe, yet with my young and devoted husband I
was contented and happy as was possible to be, with so many reminders
of the cloud that rested over me in my spiritual horizon, with all my
constant striving for its removal. Phoebe Field, an eminent minister
among Friends, appointed a meeting in our neighborhood, in which she
dwelt upon the necessity of receiving daily nourishment from the true
and living Vine to become fruit-bearing branches, and remarked that
there were those whose religious experience seemed divergent from the
manner in which they were brought up, and through unfaithfulness had