“A few hours before her death,” writes Mr. S. Welsh, “she called me to her bedside and said, ‘I want you to promise that you will not, when I am gone, write anything about me; quietly I came among you, and quietly I wish to go away.’” And this desire of hers would have been faithfully complied with had not misrepresentations fired the gentleman to whom the request was made to take up his pen, not in defence of her, but in the correction of statements that affected certain persons who were alive. I must refer the reader for the detailed account of her last hours to Miss Lonsdale’s book. One remarkable fact must not be omitted.
Among the members of the Basilian Order in the Eastern Church, it is the rule, as soon as one of the brothers or sisters is dying, that all should leave the room. The last office performed is to screw an ikon or representation of the Saviour to the foot of the bed, that the dying may in the supreme moment not think of any earthly tie, any earthly comfort, but look only to the Rock of his Salvation. Of this, Sister Dora knew nothing. In her last sickness she had a large crucifix hung where she could constantly gaze at it, and when she found her end approaching, she insisted on every one leaving the room,—it was her wish to die alone. And as she persisted, so was it, only one nurse standing by the door held ajar, and watching till she knew by the change of attitude, and a certain fixed look in the countenance, that Sister Dora had entered into her rest.[[15]]
Mr. Welsh says: “It was Christmas Eve when she passed away, and a dense fog, like a funeral pall, hung over the town and obscured every object a few feet from the ground. Under this strange canopy the market was being held, and people were busy buying and selling, and making preparations for the great Christmas Festival on the following day; but when the deep boom of the passing bell announced the melancholy intelligence that Sister Dora had entered into her rest, a thrill of horror ran through the people, who, with blanched cheeks and bated breath, whispered, ‘Can it be true?’ Although for eleven weeks the process of dissolution had been going on before their eyes, they could not realise the fact that she whom they loved and revered was no more.”
The funeral took place on Saturday, the 28th of December. “The day was dark and dismal, the streets, covered with slush and sludge caused by the melted snow, were thronged with spectators.... There was general mourning in the town; and although it was market day nearly every shop was closed during the time of the funeral, and all the blinds along the route of the procession were drawn.... On reaching the cemetery it was found that four other funerals had arrived from the workhouse; and as these coffins had been taken into the chapel there was no room for Sister Dora’s, which had consequently to be placed in the porch. This was as Sister Dora would have wished had she had the ordering of the arrangements; for she always gave preference to the poor, to whom she was attached in life, and from whom she would not have desired to be separated in death.”
True to her thought of others, in the midst of her last sufferings she had made arrangements for a Christmas dinner to be given to a number of her old patients, in accordance with a custom of hers in previous years; but on this occasion the festive proceedings were shorn of their gladness. All thought of her who in her pain and on her deathbed had thought of them. Every one tried, but ineffectually, to cheer and comfort the other, but the task was hopeless. One young lady, after the meal, and while the Christmas tree was being lighted, commenced singing that pretty little piece, “Far Away,”—but when she came to the words,
“Some are gone from us for ever,
Longer here they could not stay,”
she burst into tears; and the women present sobbed, and tears were seen stealing down the cheeks of bearded men.
The Walsall writer of A Review concludes his paper thus:—
“She is no idol to us, but we worship her memory as the most saintly thing that was ever given to us. Her name is immortalized, both by her own surpassing goodness, and by the love of a whole people for her—a love that will survive through generations, and give a magic and a music to those simple words, ‘Sister Dora,’ long after we shall have passed away. There was little we could ever do—there was nothing she would let us do—to relieve the self-imposed rigours of her life; but we love her in all sincerity, and now in our helplessness we find a serene joy in the knowledge that to her, as surely as to any human soul, will be spoken the Divine words: ‘Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me.’”