Heaven’s choicest blessing. Not a single thought
Could lurk in close disguise. I knew to trust
This much loved sister with my inmost soul.
And must I lose her! While unkind disease
Threatened a life so dear, my trembling heart
Sunk in o’erwhelming wo. Could prayers, or tears.
Could sleepless nights, or agonizing days,
And all the care of fond officious love
Avert thy fate,—sister, thou still hadst lived.’
Many expressions of her deep feeling on this subject might be extracted from her papers; and to her immediate friends, they are precious records of a sorrow stricken, and resigned spirit. But the friendship of these two sisters was such as ‘strangers intermeddle not with.’ The death of this sister seemed to be the dissolution of a tie, like that which occasioned the exclamation of David in his beautiful lamentation over Jonathan, ‘Thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.’