ecting death. After her release her husband thus described it to a
friend:

Her feeling about dying seemed to me to be almost unique. In all my
pastoral experience, at least, I do not recall another case quite like
it. Her faith in a better world, that is, a heavenly, was quite as
strong as her faith in God and in Christ; she regarded it as the true
home of the soul; and the tendency of a good deal of modern culture to
put _this_ world in its place as man's highest sphere and end, struck
her as a mockery of the holiest instincts at once of humanity and
religion. Death was associated in her mind with the instant realisation
of all her sweetest and most precious hopes. She viewed it as an
invitation from the King of Glory to come and be with Him. During the
more than three-and-thirty years of our married life I doubt if there
was ever a time when the summons would have found her unwilling to go;
rarely, if ever, a time when she would not have welcomed it with great
joy. On putting to her the question, "Would you be ready to go _now?_"
she would answer, "Why, yes," in a tone of calm assurance, rather of
visible delight, which I can never forget. And during all her later
years her answer to such a question would imply a sort of astonishment,
that anybody could ask it. So strong, indeed, was her own feeling about
death as a real boon to the Christian, that she was scarcely able, I
think, fully to sympathise with those who regarded it with misgiving
or terror. The point may be illustrated, perhaps, by referring to her
perfect fearlessness and repose in the midst of the most terrific
thunder-storm. No matter how vivid the lightning's flashes or how near
and loud the claps that followed, they affected her nerves as little as
any summer breeze--scarcely ever awaking her if asleep, or hindering her
from going to sleep if awake. And so it was with regard to the terrors
of death. But not merely was there an absence of all apparent dread of
death, but an exulting joy in the thought of it. There is a passage
in The Home at Greylock, which was evidently inspired by her own
experience. It is where old Mary, when her first wild burst of grief was
over, said:

Sure she's got her wish and died sudden. She was always ready to go, and
now she's gone. Often's the time I've heard her talk about dying, and I
mind a time when she thought she was going, and there was a light in her
eye, and "What d'ye think of that?" says she. I declare it was