CONCLUSION
Generally I might say that I am quite content; but as I sit down
now in the evening time of my life, it is a source of sadness and
wonder to me that I have survived both my wives and all of my
children. One by one I have laid them away in beautiful Oak Ridge
Cemetery, in Springfield, where I myself will one day be laid beside
them. I have had a delightful home life; no man could have had a
more happy and peaceful one. As I look back now, I cannot remember
that either wife or children ever caused me one moment's pain. I
was twice married. My first wife, Hannah M. Fisher, to whom I was
married in 1855, and who died in 1861, was of a very amiable spirit,
a woman of more than ordinary culture, and was the mother of my
first two children, Mrs. Ridgely and Mrs. Hardie, who lived to
womanhood, but both of whom have passed away. My second wife,
Julia Fisher, was the sister of my first wife. No better or truer
woman ever lived. She was a devoted helpmate to me during all the
years that I have occupied high public office and needed the support
and help of a woman. She did her full part and filled her place
on every occasion with dignity and propriety. It seems that her
death is the last great sorrow I shall have to bear.
The memory of the children whom I lost in their infancy is naturally
dimmed by the passage of time, but it is hard for me to understand
the justice of things when I remember the death of my two daughters,
Ella, wife of William Barret Ridgely, and Carrie, wife of Robert
Gordon Hardie, who were taken just in the very prime of womanhood,
just in the most beautiful period of a woman's life, and just at
a time when they had the most to live for.
As I think of it now, I do not know where I obtained the strength
to survive all these sorrows. I have no great fear of death, except
the natural dread of the physical pain which usually accompanies
it. I certainly wish beyond any words I have power to express that
I could have greater assurance that there will be a reuniting with
those we love and those who have loved us in some future world;
but from my reading of Scripture, and even admitting that there is
a hereafter, I cannot find any satisfactory evidence to warrant
such a belief. Could I believe that I should meet the loved ones
who have gone before, I do not know but that I should look forward
with pleasure to the "passing across." Not having this belief, I
am quite content to stay where I am as long as I can; and finally,
when old Charon appears to row me over the river Styx, I shall be
ready to go.
INDEX [omitted]
End of Project Gutenberg's Fifty Years of Public Service, by Shelby M. Cullom