... Thanks for your kind sympathy for us in our sorrow. Thanks to
you for the solid foundation you laid when our dear mother died,
which has given me a firm faith in the hour of trial. I firmly
believe that "all things work together for good," and that dear
C----'s long sickness prepared her family, herself, and all of us
for her death. There was much in her sickness and death that was
beautiful and comforting. It was pleasant after so many days of
suffering to see her at rest; and we feel it must have been a happy
release to her too, for her face in death bore no trace of the pain
she had endured, of which we were glad, for she looked so natural
and sweetly that we could allow her two youngest children to look
at "mamma asleep, to wake up an angel in heaven." C---- never
wanted her children to have a horror of death, and her desire has
been granted. They have no other idea than that the Good Father
released their dear mother from pain and she is an angel in heaven.
An Episcopalian minister officiated at the funeral, as C---- always
preferred that service. He was a personal friend of hers and my
brother E----'s. My brother's widow came from ----to attend the
funeral, and she requested that I select a piece to be read in case
they found no one to lead in a hymn. I selected your hymn,--"A holy
air is breathing round." It was read in the middle of the service,
very impressively, and was particularly comforting to N----'s widow
and myself, as you had officiated at our mother's funeral and had
baptized C---- and N----. (Do you remember the day you baptized me
and my three brothers and C---- at the Masonic Hall?) The children
scattered flowers over the graves; A----, ten years old, said on
returning from the cemetery, "Papa, it was all beautiful, no dread
or gloom about it. It was just as mamma would have had it." And so
it was. The children will always feel the life hereafter a reality.
"More homelike is the vast unknown," since their mamma is there.
The piece "At noontide," in last week's "Register," applies to dear
C----'s death as well as if written for her. It is beautiful. I
want it in a leaflet to distribute, as I have opportunity
frequently for just such words. Yes! I help on "Unity," the
"Register," and "Our Best Words."... Hope I am making Christians,
and not merely Liberals or merely Unitarians. Think we are gaining
ground with many; but the literature must be distributed with great
care, I feel with you.... We are glad to have the Thayers home
again, and will probably begin to work earnestly next week.
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