m a faded copy of the _Commercial
Advertiser_, which reads as follows:

'OBITUARY,

'Died, on the 26th instant, in the eighteenth year of her age, Miss
Sarah Matilda Hoffman, daughter of Josiah Ogden Hoffman. Thus
another youthful and lovely victim is added to the ravages of that
relentless and invincible enemy to earthly happiness, the
_consumption_. In the month of January we beheld this amiable and
interesting girl in the glow of health and spirits, the delight of
her friends, the joy and pride of her family; she is now cold and
lifeless as the clod of the valley. So falls the tender flower of
spring as it expands its bosom to the chilling blight of the
morning frost. Endowed by nature with a mind unusually
discriminating, and a docility of temper and disposition admirably
calculated to reap profit from instruction, Miss Hoffman very early
became an object of anxious care and solicitude to the fondest of
fathers. That care and solicitude he soon found richly rewarded by
the progress she made in her learning, and by every evidence of a
grateful and feeling heart. After completing the course of her
education in a highly respectable seminary in Philadelphia, she
returned to her father's house, where she diligently sought every
opportunity to improve her mind by various and useful reading. She
charmed the circle of her friends by the suavity of her disposition
and the most gentle and engaging manners. She delighted and blessed
her own family by her uniformly correct and affectionate conduct.
Though not formed to mingle and shine in the noisy haunts of
dissipation, she was eminently fitted to increase the store of
domestic happiness, to bring pleasure and tranquillity to the
fireside, and to gladden the fond heart of a parent.

'Religion, so necessary to our peace in this world and to our
happiness in the next, and which gives so high a lustre to the
charms and to the virtues of woman, constantly shed her benign
influence over the conduct of Miss Hoffman, nor could the insidious
attempts of the infidel for a moment weaken her confidence in its
heavenly doctrines. With a form rather slender and fragile was
united a beauty of face, which, though not dazzling, had so much
softness, such a touching sweetness in it, that the expression
which mantl