a spasm would bring on the very thing I dreaded.

From the time I can first recollect, most of my life was spent in sadness
and disappointment. It seemed as if my whole being were a mass of suffering
and affliction. The doctor said there was nothing sound about me but my
lungs. Most of my time I appeared to be nothing but a voice. So far as I
remember, not one day of that period of my life was passed without pain and
suffering. My high temper, of course, added mental suffering to the
physical.

Many times I wondered why I could not die. My suffering was greatly
increased by melancholy and mental depression. I often sat beside my mother
and cried, "Mother, why can't I die? Why did I not die when I was a child?
I am a trial to myself and to all around me." Mother would say, "Mary, God
has a bright design in all this. We do not know the reason why you are so
afflicted, but we will know sometime." With such comforting words she many
times soothed my troubled spirit. God blessed me with a dear Christian
mother. Her gentle, patient life--so loving and Christlike--stamped upon my
soul in early childhood the ideal of real Christian character. I had before
me constantly an example of what I ought to be. As I look back at those
days, my association with my mother seems to have been the only bright spot
in my early life.

At six years of age I began to have dyspepsia, and as a result, could eat
but very little food without suffering. Up to this time and later, I could
walk a mile or more; but was liable at any time to have a fit. When about
twelve or thirteen years of age, other afflictions set in, such as spinal
and female trouble.

In my fifteenth year I became a helpless invalid, and lay in bed for five