"'While there is life there is hope,' said the sympathizing physician, wiping away a tear; 'all that we can do we will, and leave the event with a higher power.'
"Day after day, night after night, regardless of food or rest, Grace kept tireless watch by the little sufferer; the selfish mother occasionally looking in, declaring her inability to stay in a sick-room, and expressing her satisfaction that others had more nerve than herself for such scenes.
"That day a new harp was strung, a white robe was worn, a new song was heard in heaven. On earth, 'the child was not!'
"'Alone again in the world, alone with the dead,' faltered Grace, as she sank insensibly by the little corpse.
"Well was it for the grief-stricken father that a new object of solicitude was before him; well for the mother that such devotion to her dead child had at last touched a heart so encrusted with worldliness. All their united efforts, joined with the skill of the friend and physician, were needed to rescue Grace from the grave. To an observing eye, the interest the latter evinced for his fair patient was not entirely professional. He had been touched by her self-sacrificing devotion, and her friendlessness, and each day more and more charmed with her beauty and simplicity.
"Softly fell the moonlight on the countless sleepers in the vast cemetery of ——. Each tiny flower swaying in the night-breeze was gemmed with nature's tears. The solemn stillness was unbroken save by the sweet note of some truant bird returning to his leafy home. How many hearts so lately throbbing with pain or pleasure lay there forever stilled! There, in her unappropriated loveliness, slept the betrothed maiden; there, the bride with her head pillowed on golden tresses whose sunny beauty e'en the great spoiler seemed loth to touch; the dimpled babe that yesterday lay warm and rosy in its mothers breast; the gray-haired sire, weary with life's conflict, the loving wife and mother in life's sweet prime, deaf to the wail of her helpless babe and to the agonized cry of its father; the faithful pastor, gone at last to hear the 'Well done, good and faithful servant;' the reckless youth, who with brow untouched by care, and limbs fashioned for strength and beauty, had rushed unbidden into the presence of his Maker, impatient for the summons of the 'great Reaper.' On his tombstone, partial friends had written, 'he sleeps in Jesus,' while underneath, (in 'the handwriting on the wall') methought I could read, 'no murderer hath eternal life.'
"There lay the miser, who only in death's agony loosened his hold of his golden god. The widow he has made houseless, and her shivering orphans, read the mocking falsehood on the splendid marble that covers him, and murmur in words that are God's own truth, 'It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.'
"With a saddened heart I turn to inhale the sweet breath of the flowers planted by the hand of affection, or strewn in garlands with falling tears over the loved and lost. Before me, shining in the moonlight, is a marble tablet; on it I read, 'Our little Meta.' I advance toward it; suddenly I see a female figure approaching, looking so spiritual in the moonlight—with her snowy robe and shining hair—that I could almost fancy her an angel guarding the child's grave. She advanced toward it, and kneeling, presses her lips to the fragrant sod, saying in a voice of anguish,
"'Would to God I had died for thee, my child, my child!'