“On Thursday morning his eyes had a dull appearance, remained half-closed while sleeping, and seemed glassy and death-like. His stomach rejected all refreshment. At ten and twelve o’clock he took some ether, which he said did him good. After vomiting, with the suffering which preceded it, he said, ‘O, how few there are who suffer such great torment—who die so hard!’ During all the night his sufferings increased, so that it was inexpressibly painful to behold his agony—sometimes calling for water, which gave relief only while he was drinking it, to be followed by the pain of ejecting it. At midnight he said his fever had returned. His extremities were cold, his head hot. It was the fever of death. His weakness was such that he now seldom spoke, except to indicate some want, which he more frequently did by signs.
“During the forenoon of Friday, the 12th, his countenance was that of a dying man. About noon he showed some aberration of mind; but it was only transient. At three o’clock he said, in Burman, to Panapah, a native servant, ‘It is done; I am going.’ Shortly after, he made a sign with his hand downward, which was not understood; drawing Mr. Ranney’s ear close to his mouth, he said, convulsively, ‘Brother Ranney, will you bury me? bury me?—quick! quick!’ These words were prompted, perhaps, by the thought of burial in the sea crossing his mind. Mr. Ranney here being called out for a moment, Dr. Judson spoke to the servant in English, and also in Burman, of Mrs. Judson, bidding him ‘take care of poor mistress’; and at fifteen minutes past four o’clock he breathed his last. ‘His death,’ says Mr. Ranney, ‘was like falling asleep. Not the movement of a muscle was perceptible, and the moment of the going out of life was indicated only by his ceasing to breathe. A gentle pressure of the hand, growing more and more feeble as life waned, showed the peacefulness of the spirit about to take its homeward flight.’
“It was first determined to keep the body until Saturday for burial; but Mr. Ranney was admonished of the necessity of immediate preparations. A strong plank coffin was soon constructed; several buckets of sand were poured in to make it sink; and at eight o’clock in the evening the crew assembled, the larboard port was opened, and in perfect silence, broken only by the voice of the captain, all that was mortal of Dr. Judson was committed to the deep, in latitude thirteen degrees north, longitude ninety-three degrees east, nine days after their embarkation from Maulmain, and scarcely three days out of sight of the mountains of Burmah.”
MRS. EMILY C. JUDSON AND HER FAMILY.
From an Ambrotype taken at Hamilton, N. Y., in 1853.
The record of these last days may be fittingly closed, by a poem written by Mrs. Judson after her husband’s departure from Maulmain:
Sweet Mother.
“The wild south-west monsoon has risen,
On broad gray wings of gloom,
While here from out my dreary prison