She was ever busy. In hours of ease she had her knitting-needle. How pleasant it was to see her at her work, in the warm days of summer, as she sat in her high-backed chair on the piazza which overlooked the River. With the steamboats, then beginning their course, she was never satisfied. "The boats with sails," she said, "glided away so natural like: but with the steamboats it was all forced work." No doubt she often regarded these different vessels, as emblematic of those who moved under gentle and approved agencies, and those who were out of harmony with nature around us,—the working of the hands that are infinite in power,—those who cared only for hire, and needed, in order to their activity, some of those goads which happily abound for the idle.
The aged woman came to us what she was, to remind us what endless influences are ever ready to mould us to increasing piety, and love for others. To the sick and sorrowing out of her household she had been an angel of charity. Her life had been a golden cord. He had strung it for her with jewels from the mine. Is that mine exhausted? The glories we know lie near at hand for all that will gather them.
Well can I realize after the lapse of years, the sorrow of the aged wife when it was manifest that my old friend must soon close his eyes on the world for ever. There he lay, his strong form promising hope, which the decision of the physician denied. Could he be dying, who was bound to the scene around him by so many ties? As he had gained these fields by such a life of labor, and held them so firmly in his grasp, as every tree seemed so surely his, as you felt the impress of his firm and undisputed will in all the arrangements of his broad farm, you might ask can all these bonds which bind him here be sundered? But God sunders all, as he will, in a moment.
And now he was on the verge of the world to come. In infancy his life had hung by the most attenuated thread. Was it better for him that he was to die an old man, one who had passed through life's trials, had received such endless mercies, had so many calls to so many duties? Or would it have been better for him that he had died in infancy, passing to the ineffable joy, but to less glory and honor than those who have borne the cross, endured in true manly toil, the burden and heat of the day in the vineyard of the Master?
It was in a quiet house, quiet as one so soon to be forsaken of its owner, that we assembled to receive with him the precious emblems of the great sacrifice made for us, in infinite love. If he received consolation, it was indeed given also to the aged wife. Her quiet sorrow, without a tear, was reverent, and full of submission. Its evenness,—not rising or falling with every hope or fear,—was a seal of its great depth. You read in her fixed countenance that she had the past with all its memories, and the future with all its solitude clearly before her. She was henceforth to be as the shattered vase, just waiting some small trial of its strength, to fall to pieces. But the lamp within was to burn on, and fed with ever increasing supplies of aliment for its flame, to glow with increasing radiance. Such lights in the temple of God never go out.
My aged friends! your ashes lie where you hoped that your mortal remains would find their resting-place. Years have passed, and yet I recall you to remembrance more affectionately, than when I stood by your opened grave. One cause of this, is, I presume, that the more I become acquainted with men, the more I learn to value those who have risen in their integrity, above the low level of ordinary character.
Changed is your dwelling. A vast and costly pile occupies the place where once it stood. But could you, the former inhabitants, of that which has undergone such alteration, reappear among us, we should recognize what is eternal in its nature. What is of earth, alters and passes away. But love, and truth, and faith, all the nobleness given by the Redeemer,—these endure. These are extended and glorified in the world to come.