s
death, in a letter to us, he spoke of his prospects in language which
even then brought moisture to our eyes:--

"I am striving to get me an asylum of a farm. I have a wife and seven
children, every one of them with a whole spirit. I don't want to be
separated from any of them, only with a view to come together again. I
have a beautiful little retreat in prospect, forty odd miles north, where
I imagine I can get potatoes and repose,--a sort of haven or port. I am
among the breakers, and 'mad for land.' If I get this home,--it is a mile
or two in among the hills from the pretty domicil once visited by
yourself and glorious Thompson,--I am this moment indulging the fancy
that I may see you at it before we die. Why can't I have you come and
see me? You see, dear W., I don't want to send you anything short of a
full epistle. Let me end as I begun, with the proffer of my hand in
grasp of yours extended. My heart I do not proffer,--it was yours
before,--it shall be yours while I am N. P. ROGERS."

Alas! the haven of a deeper repose than he had dreamed of was close at
hand. He lingered until the middle of the tenth month, suffering much,
yet calm and sensible to the last. Just before his death, he desired his
children to sing at his bedside that touching song of Lover's, _The
Angel's Whisper_. Turning his eyes towards the open window, through
which the leafy glory of the season he most loved was visible, he
listened to the sweet melody. In the words of his friend Pierpont,--

"The angel's whisper stole in song upon his closing ear;
From his own daughter's lips it came, so musical and clear,
That scarcely knew the dying man what melody was there--
The last of earth's or first of heaven's pervading all the air."

He sleeps in the Concord burial-ground, under the shadow of oaks; the
very spot he would have chosen, for he looked upon trees with something
akin to human affection. "They are," he said, "the beautiful handiwork
and architecture of God, on which the eye never tires. Every one is
a feather in the earth's cap, a plume in her bonnet, a tress on her
forehead,--a comfort, a refreshing, and an ornament to her." Spring has
hung over him her buds, and opened beside him her violets. Summer has
laid her green oaken garland on his grave, and now the frost-blooms of
autumn drop upon it. Shall man cast a nettle on that mound? He loved
humanity,--shall it be less kind to him than Nature? S