But love and self-forgetfulness and tender service wear out the silver cord. It was fretted away silently, without complaint, the face growing ever more seraphic, at moments almost transparent with the shining of an inner light. One trembled to look on that spiritual beauty. Surely, the light of a near heaven was there. Silently, without complaint or murmur, she was preparing for the great change. Far-away thoughts lay mirrored in her clear, shining eyes. She had seen upon the mount the pattern of another life. Still no outward change in duty-doing, in tender care for others. Then one day she lay down and fell asleep like a little child on its mother’s breast, with the inscrutable smile on her lips. She who had been “mothering” everybody all her life long was at last gathered gently and painlessly into the Everlasting Arms.
EPILOGUE.
An amber Adirondack river flows
Down through the hills to blue Ontario;
Along its banks the staunch rock-maple grows,
And fields of wheat beneath the drifted snow.
The summer sun, as if to quench his flame,
Dips in the lake, and sinking disappears.
Such was the land from which my mother came