New York, Dec, 16, 1887.
MY FRIENDS: Again we stand in the shadow of the great mystery--a shadow
as deep and dark as when the tears of the first mother fell upon the
pallid face of her lifeless babe--a mystery that has never yet been
solved.
We have met in the presence of the sacred dead, to speak a word of
praise, of hope, of consolation.
Another life of love is now a blessed memory--a lingering strain of
music.
The loving daughter, the pure and consecrated wife, the sincere friend,
who with tender faithfulness discharged the duties of a life, has
reached her journey's end.
A braver, a more serene, a more chivalric spirit--clasping the loved and
by them clasped--never passed from life to enrich the realm of death.
No field of war ever witnessed greater fortitude, more perfect, smiling
courage, than this poor, weak and helpless woman displayed upon the bed
of pain and death.
Her life was gentle and her death sublime. She loved the good and all
the good loved her.
There is this consolation: she can never suffer more; never feel again
the chill of death; never part again from those she loves. Her heart can
break no more. She has shed her last tear, and upon her stainless brow
has been set the wondrous seal of everlasting peace.
When the Angel of Death--the masked and voiceless--enters the door of
home, there come with her all the daughters of Compassion, and of these
Love and Hope remain forever.
You are about to take this dear dust home--to the home of her girlhood,
and to the place that was once my home. You will lay her with neighbors
whom I have loved, and who are now at rest. You will lay her where my
father sleeps.
"Lay her i' the earth,
And from her fair and unpolluted flesh
May violets spring."
I never knew, I never met, a braver spirit than the one that once
inhabited this silent form of dreamless clay.