SINCE it has pleased God to give publicity to a name obscure, to an extent that may hereafter excite the public curiosity respecting her that bore it; and since it may please Him also to get himself honor by the manifestation of His goodness and mercy, in the record of her life-feeling that it will be impossible for any one else, to state truly that which alone is worth recording,—the history of her mental and spiritual existence,—she is induced to put down at her leisure these notices of herself; rendered the more necessary by the fact, that she has never kept a diary, or any kind of memoranda, of even the most important occurrences of her life. Should that time ever come, which in the plenitude of her happiness it becomes her to anticipate, when with powers and faculties remaining, the interests and affections of this world will have terminated, it is her present thought to collate these materials, and such of her letters as can be collected, into a regular memoir. Of this God knoweth.

1839.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Birth and Childhood.

CAROLINE FRY was born at Tunbridge Wells on the 31st of December, 1787, being one of ten chil dren, and seven daughters.

Of her who makes these records, the remotest recollections are of a most happy and too indulgent home, where, without the elegances or the restraints of polite, or even social life, every comfort was in profuse abundance, and all pleased themselves after their

own manner.

she

Being the youngest but one of a family whose births extended through more than twenty years, remembers but few of her brothers and sisters as children, and the prescriptive right by which the youngest child of a large family is spoiled, was extended in her favor to the two youngest, the humored pets of a