Three or four years after the birth of her daughter, Christina had had one more child. She had never been strong since she married, and had a presentiment that she should not survive this last confinement. She accordingly wrote the following letter, which was to be given, as she endorsed upon it, to her sons when Ernest was sixteen years old. It reached him on his mother's death many years later, for it was the baby who died now, and not Christina. It was found among papers which she had repeatedly and carefully arranged, with the seal already broken. This, I am afraid, shows that Christina had read it and thought it too creditable to be destroyed when the occasion that had called it forth had gone by. It is as follows--

  "BATTERSBY, March 15th, 1841.

  "My Two Dear Boys,--When this is put into your hands will you try to
  bring to mind the mother whom you lost in your childhood, and whom, I
  fear, you will almost have forgotten?  You, Ernest, will remember her
  best, for you are past five years old, and the many, many times that
  she has taught you your prayers and hymns and sums and told you
  stories, and our happy Sunday evenings will not quite have passed from
  your mind, and you, Joey, though only four, will perhaps recollect
  some of these things.  My dear, dear boys, for the sake of that mother
  who loved you very dearly--and for the sake of your own happiness for
  ever and ever--attend to and try to remember, and from time to time
  read over again the last words she can ever speak to you.  When I
  think about leaving you all, two things press heavily upon me: one,
  your father's sorrow (for you, my darlings, after missing me a little
  while, will soon forget your loss), the other, the everlasting welfare
  of my children.  I know how long and deep the former will be, and I
  know that he will look to his children to be almost his only earthly
  comfort.  You know (for I am certain that it will have been so), how
  he has devoted his life to you and taught you and laboured to lead you
  to all that is right and good.  Oh, then, be sure that you _are_ his
  comforts.  Let him find you obedient, affectionate and attentive to
  his wishes, upright, self-denying and diligent; let him never blush
  for or grieve over the sins and follies of those who owe him such a
  debt of gratitude, and whose first duty it is to study his happiness.
  You have both of you a name which must not be disgraced, a father and
  a grandfather of whom to show yourselves worthy; your respectability
  and well-doing in life rest mainly with yourselves, but far, far
  beyond earthly respectability and well-doing, and compared with which
  they are as nothing, your eternal happiness rests with yourselves.  You
  know your duty, but snares and temptations from without beset you, and
  the nearer you approach to manhood the more strongly will you feel
  this.  With God's help, with God's word, and with humble hearts you
  will stand in spite of everything, but should you leave off seeking in
  earnest for the first, and applying to the second, should you learn to
  trust in yourselves, or to the advice and example of too many around
  you, you will, you must fall.  Oh, 'let God be true and every man a
  liar.'  He says you cannot serve Him and Mammon.  He says that strait
  is the gate that leads to eternal life.  Many there are who seek to
  widen it; they will tell you that such and such self-indulgences are
  but venial offences--that this and that worldly compliance is
  excusable and even necessary.  The thing _cannot be_; for in a hundred
  and a hundred places He tells you so--look to your Bibles and seek
  there whether such counsel is true--and if not, oh, 'halt not between
  two opinions,' if God is the Lord follow Him; only be strong and of a
  good courage, and He will never leave you nor forsake you.  Remember,
  there is not in the Bible one law for the rich, and one for the
  poor--one for the educated and one for the ignorant.  To _all_ there
  is but one thing needful.  _All_ are to be living to God and their
  fellow-creatures, and not to themselves.  _All_ must seek first the
  Kingdom of God and His righteousness--must _deny themselves_, be pure
  and chaste and charitable in the fullest and widest sense--all,
  'forgetting those things that are behind,' must 'press forward towards
  the mark, for the prize of the high calling of God.'

  "And now I will add but two things more.  Be true through life to each
  other, love as only brothers should do, strengthen, warn, encourage
  one another, and let who will be against you, let each feel that in
  his brother he has a firm and faithful friend who will be so to the
  end; and, oh! be kind and watchful over your dear sister; without
  mother or sisters she will doubly need her brothers' love and
  tenderness and confidence.  I am certain she will seek them, and will
  love you and try to make you happy; be sure then that you do not fail
  her, and remember, that were she to lose her father and remain
  unmarried, she would doubly need protectors.  To you, then, I
  especially commend her.  Oh! my three darling children, be true to
  each other, your Father, and your God.  May He guide and bless you,
  and grant that in a better and happier world I and mine may meet
  again.--Your most affectionate mother,

  CHRISTINA PONTIFEX."

From enquiries I have made, I have satisfied myself that most mothers write letters like this shortly before their confinements, and that fifty per cent. keep them afterwards, as Christina did.