That serene ending has often reminded me, as indeed his whole life reminds me, seen now from afar, of some lines by Walter Savage Land or to whom, in temperament and character, he had one or two points of close resemblance:
“I strove with none, for none was worth my strife:
Nature I loved, and, next to Nature, Art;
I warmed both hands before the fire of life;
It sinks, and I am ready to depart.”
The burial services were held at the family residence on the afternoon of Thursday, February 19th, when the Rev. Dr. R. N. Parke read the twelfth chapter of Ecclesiastes and prayers for the family and others present. Judge Gaius L. Halsey of Wilkes-Barre, Pa., a nephew and namesake of whom he was very fond, delivered an address. The day was cold, clear and still, sun and snow filling the world with light. Because of ice on the sidewalks, the procession passed up the centre of the street—a line that reached from the doorway of his home to the old churchyard path. When the mound had been raised up, evergreen boughs were made to cover it. On the following morning the ground was wrapped in a light covering of newly fallen snow from which rose up the large mound, the evergreens concealed beneath the mantle of white.
“Let me not mourn for my father; let me do worthily of him; let me walk as blamelessly through this shadow world.”
FOOTNOTES
[1] The date of Mr. Sands’s birth is incorrectly given on page 126. It should be Feb. 19, 1813—not 1812.