eral business of life; now it was all these things
at once. Perfectly unselfish, swift to sympathize, and eager to relieve,
she wrought at such designs with a flushed earnestness that disregarded
season, weather, time of day or night, food, rest. Under such a hurry of
the spirits, and such incessant occupation, the strongest constitution
will commonly go down; hers, neither of the strongest nor the weakest,
yielded to the burden, and began to sink.

To have saved her life then, by taking action on the warning that shone
in her eyes and sounded in her voice, would have been impossible,
without changing her nature. As long as the power of moving about in the
old way was left to her, she must exercise it, or be killed by the
restraint. And so the time came when she could move about no longer, and
took to her bed.

All the restlessness gone then, and all the sweet patience of her
natural disposition purified by the resignation of her soul, she lay
upon her bed through the whole round of changes of the seasons. She lay
upon her bed through fifteen months. In all that time her old
cheerfulness never quitted her. In all that time not an impatient or a
querulous minute can be remembered.

At length, at midnight on the 2d of February, 1864, she turned down a
leaf of a little book she was reading, and shut it up.

The ministering hand that had copied the verses into the tiny album was
soon around her neck; and she quietly asked, as the clock was on the
stroke of one,--

"Do you think I am dying, mama?"

"I think you are very, very ill to-night, my dear."

"Send for my sister. My feet are so cold! Lift me up."

Her sister entering as they raised her, she said, "It has come at last!"
and, with a bright and happy smile, looked upward, and departed.

Well had she written,--

"Why shouldst thou fear the beautiful angel, Death,
Who waits thee at the portals of the skies,
Ready to kiss away thy struggling breath,
Ready with gentle hand to close thine eyes?

Oh, what were life, if life were all? Thine eyes
Are blinded by their tears, or thou wouldst see
Thy treasures wait thee in the far-off skies,
And Death, thy friend, will give them all to thee."

BEYOND.

From her own fair dominions,
Long since, with shorn pinions,
My spirit was banished:
But above her still hover, in vigils and dreams,
Ethereal visitants, voices, and gleams,