A SUNDAY IN DUBUQUE.
“O day most calm, most bright,
The fruit of this, the next world’s bud;
The indorsement of supreme delight,
Writ by a Friend and with his blood;
The couch of time; care’s balm and bay;
The week were dark, but for thy light:
Thy torch doth show the way.”
GEORGE HERBERT.
A very pleasant room at the Julien House afforded a welcome retreat on
the Sabbath. It was intensely hot; the burning rays of the sun were
reflected from the towering bluffs that shield the town from the west
wind. A walk of a mile and a half through the main street led them to
the Methodist church, where the services were very animating and
delightful.
A cordial greeting from the minister, who had known Mrs. Lester in the
East, was followed by a kind invitation to the parsonage, next door to
the church. There was a beautiful bunch of flowers on the table,
gathered on the prairies the day before. One, the moccasin flower, a
large yellow flower, with a sort of pouch like a gigantic calceolaria,
Norman had never seen before, and he was very much pleased when a number
of them were given to him.
Several churches to which Mrs. Lester went in the afternoon were closed,
so she continued her walk to the same church, where she heard a very
good sermon from the Presbyterian minister, to whose congregation the
use of the Methodist church was given while their own was being
repaired.
The street she took on her return home led her nearer to the bluff, up
which people were creeping to get some cool air in the oppressive
stillness of that summer afternoon. Every door was open, and quiet
pleasant interiors were revealed to the passer-by; family groups, seated
on the porch or in the parlor, reading or taking their tea.
Toward evening, as he was sitting on the window, Norman saw a number of
people flocking to the Levee, and he asked his mother’s permission to
follow them, and ascertain what had happened. He soon returned, looking
very grave and downcast. He had been in the presence of death. A young
man of nineteen had been drowned the evening before, seized with sudden
cramps while bathing, and they had just found his body. There it lay,
floating on the water, the head downward, the limbs drawn up; and in the
solemn presence of death light and careless words had been spoken that
shocked Norman, touched as he was by the unfamiliar sight. The drowned
lad was French, an orphan and a stranger in the land, with no one to
miss him or mourn for him, save one loving heart, that of a sister, left
alone without kindred or friends. Later in the evening the vehicle
containing the body stopped at a confectioner’s, on the opposite side of
the street, and the young man was carried in to the room he had left the
evening before, in the fullness of life and health.
“Death enters and there’s no defense;
His time there’s none can tell;
He’ll in a moment bear thee hence,
To heaven, or down to hell.”
Well is it in this life of uncertainty, when the happiest moments may be
darkened by the presence of this grim visitor, to be prepared for his
coming; to have our fear of him taken away; to be able to look upon him
as the messenger sent to call us to our Father’s house.
“In the midst of life we are in death: to whom then, O Lord, can we turn
but unto thee!”