“I think my health has suffered from keeping the Sabbath alone in my chamber, in the cold; but I did not think I could keep it where all manner of work and worldly conversation was the order of the day, as with Sundaykeepers. I think it is the most laborious working day with those who keep first day. Indeed, it does not seem to me that the best of Sundaykeepers observe any day as they should. Oh, how I long to be again with Sabbathkeepers! Sister White will want to see me in the reform dress. Will she be so kind as to send me a pattern, and I will pay her when I get there. I suppose I shall need to be fitted out when I get among you. I like it much. Sister Thompson thinks she would like to wear the reform dress.” (1T 672.1) MC VC

“I have had a difficulty in breathing, so that I have not been able to sleep for more than a week, occasioned, I suppose, by the stovepipe’s parting and completely filling my room with smoke and gas at bedtime, and my sleeping there without proper ventilation. I did not, at the time, suppose smoke was so unwholesome, nor consider that the impure gas which generated from the wood and coal was mingled with it. I awoke with such a sense of suffocation that I could not breathe lying down, and spent the remainder of the night sitting up. I never before knew the dreadful feeling of stifling sensations. I began to fear I should never sleep again. I therefore resigned myself into the hands of God for life or death, entreating him to spare me if he had any further need of me in his vineyard; otherwise I had no wish to live. I felt entirely reconciled to the hand of God upon me. But I also felt that satanic influences must be resisted. I therefore bade Satan get behind me and away from me, and told the Lord that I would not turn my hand over to choose either life or death, but that I would refer it implicitly to Him who knew me altogether. My future was unknown to myself, therefore said I, Thy will is best. Life is of no account to me, so far as its pleasures are concerned. All its riches, its honors, are nothing compared with usefulness. I do not crave them; they cannot satisfy or fill the aching void which unperformed duty leaves to me. I would not live uselessly, to be a mere blot or blank in life. And though it seems a martyr’s death to die thus, I am resigned, if that is God’s will.” (1T 672.2) MC VC