Only a few days before, a kind Providence had guided Arther H. Day, a cousin of Nina’s, from his work in the office of the Advance, in Chicago, and Robert B. Riggs from his teaching in Beloit College, up to Peoria bottom, for a little rest. And so they were there to help and give sympathy. Of this event Mr. Day wrote: “Rarely is it the lot of one so blessed with loving relatives and friends to pass away surrounded by so few to sympathize, and to be buried with so few to weep. Three relatives and nine other white friends stood alone by her grave, and the many hundreds in the far East knew not of the scene. I say white friends, because I would not ignore the presence of those many dusky faces which looked on in sorrow, because their friend was dead.
“About noon on Tuesday, August 6, the funeral service was conducted by Chaplain Crocker. The same hymn was sung that, by Nina’s own choice, had been sung at her wedding:—
“‘Guide me, O thou great Jehovah.’
One room of the house was filled with Indians, and the service was partly in the native language. Her grave was made near the window of her room, where she so often had beheld the sunset; and as kindly hands laid her body there, surrounded by beautiful flowers, the chaplain said: ‘Never was more precious dust laid in Dakota soil—never more hopeful seed planted for a spiritual harvest among the Dakota people.’”
This beautiful summing-up of her character appeared as an editorial in the Advance, by Rev. Simeon Gilbert:—
“Here was a young woman of extraordinary beauty of person, of still more noticeable symmetry and completeness of mental endowment, sweetness and nobility of disposition, brightness and elasticity of temperament; quickly, keenly sympathetic with others’ joys and sorrows—but who had never known a grief of her own; converted in infancy, reared in one of the happiest of earnest Christian homes, and favored with as fine social and educational advantages as the country affords; with too much sense to be affected by mere ‘romance,’ yet deeply alive to all the poetry alike in literature and in real life; and withal, from early childhood, with a spiritual imagination exquisitely alive to the realness and the nearness of unseen things, and the all-controlling sweep of the motives springing therefrom;—rarely does one meet a young person better fitted at once to enjoy and to adorn what is best in American Christian homes. At the age of twenty-four she marries a young man just out of the seminary, and goes forth with him beyond the frontiers of civilization, into the very heart of savage Indian tribes. What a sacrifice; what a venture; what certain-coming solicitudes, perils, cares, deprivations, hardships, loneliness, and mountainous discouragements! And there for the short period of less than five years she lives, when suddenly the young missionary is left alone, longing for the ‘touch of a vanished hand and the sound of a voice that is still.’
“Now, a case like this must set one to studying over again what, after all, is the true philosophy of life, and what, on the whole, is the wisest economy of personal forces in the church’s work of Christianizing the world. As helping to a right answer, let us note a few facts:—
“1. It costs to save a lost world; and nothing is wasted that serves well that end. God himself has given for this purpose the choicest, the highest, and the best which it was possible for even him to give.
“2. Heathen people, even savages, as we call them, are not insensible to the unique fascination, and power to subdue and inspire, which belong to what is really most beautiful in aspect, manner, mind, and character. Often it is to them as if they had seen a vision, or dreamed a startling dream of possibilities of which they had known nothing, and could have known nothing, until they saw it, and the sight awakened into being and action the diviner elements of their own hidden nature. The Word of God is one form of revelation, but the work of God in a peculiarly complete and lovely character is another revelation, and one that unmistakably interprets itself. There is as much need of the one as there is of the other. The light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ must, in most cases at least, first be seen reflected ‘in the face’ of some of his disciples. The more dense the darkness, the more intense must be the shining of the love and the beauty of the truth which are to enlighten, captivate, lead forth, and refine. Among all the teepees and huts of that Indian reservation, as also throughout the barracks and quarters of the military post at Fort Sully, Mrs. Riggs was known, and the potent charm of her personal influence and home-life was deeply felt. It is largely due to such persons that the cause of missions, even among the most degraded, commands the respect, if not the veneration, of those who otherwise might have looked on derisively.
“3. Nor, again, are the lives of such persons wasted as regards their influence upon those who knew them, or shall come to know of them; at home. ‘How far that little candle throws its beams; so shines a good example’; and in instances like these it shines more effectively than, perhaps, in any other circumstances would have been possible. If one were to mention a score of American women who have exerted most influence in determining the best characteristics of American women, half of them, we suspect, would be names of the women who, leaving home and country, went far forth seeking to multiply similar homes in other countries.
“4. Nor, again, is the strangely beautiful life wasted because cut short so early in its course. The ointment most precious was never more so than when its box was broken and the odor of it filled all the house. This that this young missionary has done, animated by the love of the Master and a sacred passion for lifting up the lowly, will be spoken of as a memorial of her in all the churches; and in not a few homes, of the rich as of the poor, will be felt the sweet constraint of her beautiful, joyous, consecrated life. She was not alone; there are many more like her; and, best of all, there are to be vastly more yet, who will not be deaf to ‘the high calling.’ The Master has need of them. The way, on the whole, is infinitely attractive. Thanks for the life of this woman who did so much, from first to last, to make it appear so!
“And thanks too for such a death, which, coming in the sweetest and completest blooming of life’s beauty, when not a fault had stayed to mar it, and no wasting had ever touched it—an ending which transfigures all that came before it, and which now, in the mingling of retrospect and prospect, helps those who knew her to a deeply surprised sense of the fact that,
‘To Death it is given,
To see how this world is embosomed in heaven.’”
To us, who are blind and cannot see afar off, it is impossible to perceive, and difficult to believe, that the taking away in the vigor of womanhood of one who was showing such a capacity and adaptability for the work of elevating the Teetons can be made to subserve the furtherance of the cause of Christ. But we must believe that God, who sees the end from the beginning, and who makes no mistakes, will bring out of this sore bereavement a harvest of joy; and that that grave under the window of the mission house in Peoria bottom will be a testimony to the love of Jesus and the power of his Gospel, that will thrill and uplift many hearts from Bangor to Fort Sully. It was a beautiful life of faith and service; and it has only gone to be perfected in the shadow of the Tree of Life.
S. R. R.