A FUNERAL I SAW.
I have been to a funeral to-day. It was in a church;—I had to pass through a garden to reach it;—the warm rain was dropping gently on the shrubs and early flowers, and inside warm tears were falling; for before the chancel lay a coffin, and in it was a fair young wife and mother, pale and sweet as the white flowers that lay upon the coffin-lid. Near it was her husband, and beside him were her aged parents, bowed down with grief that she who they thought would close their fading eyes, should fade first. In a house opposite the church, were the dead mother’s babe, only a few days old, and two other little ones, just old enough to prattle unconsciously as they went from room to room, “Mamma has gone away.” I knew, though they did not, how day after day would pass, and these little girls, who had always seen mamma come back again, after she had “gone away,” would stand at the window, looking this way and that, with their little bright faces, and listening for her light footstep; and my heart ached and my eyes filled as I thought how every day, as they grew older, they would need her care and feel her loss the more; for it is only in part that a father, even the kindest, can fill a watchful mother’s place;—he, whose business must be out of doors and away; how can he know how weary the little feet get wandering up and down, with no mamma’s lap to climb upon; how weary the little hands,—putting down one thing, and taking up another, with no mamma to nod smilingly and say, “I see”—or “it is very pretty, dear;” how homesick the little rifled heart feels, though it scarce knows why; how tasteless the pretty cup of milk mamma used to hold to the rosy lips; how empty parlor and nursery, chamber and hall? How much less gentle is nurse’s touch than hers; how much sooner she wearies of answering little curious questions, and getting bits of string and toys for restless fingers to play with; how much longer seems the time now, before papa comes home to dinner and tea,—poor papa—who, with an iron hand, crushes down his own great sorrow and tries and fails to speak to them in her soft, sweet, winning way; and tries and fails to soothe their little insect griefs, though he would die to save them a heart-pang.
All this I thought of as I looked at these two little curly-headed girls and their baby sister; and I said to myself, I do not know why God took away their young mother, whose work just seemed begun, and left the aged grand parents who were waiting to go. Why he made that house desolate and silent, once so musical. Why he turned those tender lambs out from that soft, warm fold. With all my thinking I could not find that out; but I am just as sure, as if I could, that He did it in love, not in anger; I am just as sure as if I were in Heaven this minute, that it was best and right; though they, and you, and I, must wait till we get there to know the how and why.