Death came for more than one victim, to that doomed house. First one little head drooped, then another, then the soft eyes closed, and the little lip said, quiveringly, "It is all dark; kiss us, dear mother;" and Mrs. Adrian was a childless widow.
Dear children, God be praised that the world is not all a desert—that there are hearts that feel, eyes that weep, and hands that minister to the sorrow-stricken. Mammon has left some hearts that he has not shrivelled, some eyes that he has not blinded, some hands that he has not fettered.
Poor Mrs. Adrian! She knew that there were strangers about her, and that their voices were kind, and their hands busy straightening the dear limbs, and smoothing the cherished locks, and placing them reverently in "the narrow house;" she knew that the hearse came at their bidding, and bore her dead away; she knew that they led her back to that forsaken room, and held the tempting morsel to her grieved lip, and she felt their warm tears drop upon her cheek, and their kind hands upon her throbbing forehead; but it was all like a dream to her.
Oh, my dear children, where could she have turned in that dark hour if not to Heaven? What if she had said, with the unbeliever, "There is no God?" How could she try to lean on reeds that bent and broke beneath her? Oh, no, no! when sickness and trouble come, our hearts must have a God. Heaven only can bring healing to a heart so stunned with pain; and there the poor English woman sought it.
Did God ever forsake those who threw themselves on His great loving heart for comfort?
Never!
If Mrs. Adrian could not smile, she did not weep. True, she looked for rosy little faces she never more might see; listened for tripping little feet she never more might hear; but, dear children, peace came gently down upon her heart, like dew upon the closed flowers, and she said, with bowed head, "'Tis well."
Dear children: There is the bell for church; but Sunday is not Sunday, here in New-York. I wish I were going to church in the country with you, where everything is quiet, and sweet, and holy,—where people go to church to worship God, and not to see and to show the fashions. No, it is not Sunday here, if the bells do say so.