“I have fought the good fight” is the wording of his epitaph. I could have wished to add, “Of whom the world was not worthy.”
In 1886 he received an appointment that brought him to New York. There he yielded up a blameless life in 1893. If his last illness were not the direct result of steady, unremitting work, it is yet true that he wrought gallantly after the fatal fever fastened upon him, standing patiently in his lot until prostrated by delirium.
I shall part with reason and memory before I forget that his last thought was of the young wife kneeling at his pillow, and that the dying eyes, in losing their hold upon earth, committed her to me.
XLVI
RETURN TO MIDDLE STATES—THE HOLY LAND—MY FRIENDS THE MISSIONARIES—TWO CONSULS IN JERUSALEM
In the sketch of my husband’s life-work, written by a faithful co-laborer in the vineyard which is the world, and appended to this story, his reasons for returning to the Middle States are briefly given. As I near the latter chapters of my record, I am hampered by the necessity of treating cautiously of persons and incidents too near the present day to be spoken of with the freedom time made justifiable in earlier reminiscences. Those twelve years in the City of Churches were crowded with events of more or less moment. They were busy, and not unhappy years. Our home-group, reduced to four by the marriage of our eldest daughter, was made still smaller by the marriage of her sister on March 5, 1889, to Frederic Van de Water, of Brooklyn. The choice was wise, and the union has been one of rare blessedness.
“In-laws” have no terrors in our circle. No sinister significance attaches to the term “mother-in-law.” The adopted sons were loyal and loving to the parents of their wives. Not a cloud darkens the memory of our intercourse. The only obstacle to Belle’s marriage was thus stated in whimsical vexation by her father:
“It is hard that, when there are said to be fifteen hundred proper names in the English language, my girls must select men who have the same. It leads to no end of confusion!”
Our boy, now grown into an athletic six-footer, was graduated from Columbia University in 1893. We three had lived in great peace and contentment during his college course. We talk often, and wistfully, of those four years of church-work, social duties, literary tasks, and academic studies, which filled hands and heads. We spent our winters in town. Sunnybank grew to be more and more a home in the summer months. It was like a return to the time when our own babies filled house and verandas with merry prattle, and our hearts made music; for there were, at the date I name, four boys to repeat the history for the proud grandparents. But for the great sorrow that had broken up Christine’s happy home in February, and brought her back to us with her two boys, and the birth, a fortnight thereafter, of Belle’s second boy, the years slipped by brightly, without other signal event until “Bert’s” graduation at the June Commencement. There was, for me, one notable exception to the gentle flow.