The Fannie Bolton Story

Letter 22a, 1895, pp. 1-3. (To Marian Davis, November 29, 1895.)

You will see by letters that I have written you that Fannie has no possibility of connecting with me. She is altogether too much like a flashing meteor, to flash up and go out in darkness. If Fannie had less self-confidence in her brilliant flashes, she would be more reliable. But her feelings is her religion. All the light, all the opportunities she has had to know the truth, handling the most precious banquet, she appropriates nothing to herself, unless it will administer to her self esteem and vanity. Certainly I could never harmonize with her in spirit. She seemed to live and breathe and work in another atmosphere. FBS 53.3

I am now relieved from this fitful, sky-rocket experience. She seems to swell up into such large measurements of herself, full of self-sufficiency, full of her own capabilities, and from the light God has been pleased to give me, she is my adversary, and has been thus throughout her connection with me. FBS 53.4

I have told you she had no love for the work that she was paid to do. Her mind is so full of variety, a cheap surface religion that she knows not what the genuine article is. She wants her life filled with variety, and what she will do remains to be seen. Poor, shallow soul. She does not have correct religious principles whenever herself is concerned.... FBS 53.5

Dec. 3. I thought I would be able to write and close this letter ere this, but since coming here I have been very weak. My heart has had such repeated shocks it is weak. I cannot feel any interest in touching a pen. The scenes I have been passing through with Fannie have been of so oft recurrence and has caused me such great distress of mind that I now have not power to rally.... FBS 53.6

The Lord knows all about the future. Two years ago He revealed to me that Fannie was my adversary, and would vex my soul and weaken my hands, but I was so anxious to get out things that I thought the people needed. Then came other trials in N.S.W. one after another that I was not able to bear it. Oh if I had only heeded the instruction given of God and let no other voice or influence come in to leave me in uncertainty I might have been saved this last terrible heart-sickening trial. But I hope the Lord will forgive me and have mercy upon me; but to try this matter again is out of the question. I am willing her talent shall be exercised for all it is worth but it will never be in connection with me. I have served my time with Fannie Bolton. FBS 53.7