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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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1847
Document
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WIDOWHOOD.
BY MISS CATHARINE M. SEDGWICK.
“For thy dear sake, I will walk patiently
Through these long hours, nor call their minutes pain.”
--Frances Anne Butler.
[p. 165]
Many, many years have passed since I was called, with other loving friends, to witness the marriage of Emily Remson to Murray Winthrop. Never was there a better-sorted pair, nor a marriage under happier auspices. They had known each other from childhood; their parents, their grandparents, were friends. There was no element of discord in their natures — they were born to an inheritance of healthy minds and hearts. They were educated with sound views of life and duty. They had the same circle of interests, tastes, and inclinations. They might be strictly called homogeneous—everything in them blending in harmony. There was no difference between them (in these days of bold assertion, to the contrary, we are old-fashioned enough to believe there is a difference), but that which distinguishes the man from the woman. Milton has said it better than any one can say it after him —
[p. 166]
“For contemplation he, and valour form'd,
For softness she, and sweet, attractive grace.”
There could not be, there never were questions of " absolute rule" and " subjection" between them, for their wills were blended in one.
The families of both parties were present, and showers of prayers, and wishes, and sympathies consecrated the occasion. It was a general family festival — a “beautiful hour; when in every cloud stood a smiling angel, who, instead of rain-drops, showered down flowers.”
For fifteen years life fairly kept its promise to them. There was but one flaw in their happiness, and that I have often heard Emily cheerfully say, “I ought not to wish to escape from, and I do not ; there must be something — some earthy sediment in the clearest cup ; and what could I have easier to bear than the ill-health that seems to double my husband's tenderness, and stimulate his invention to open new sources of enjoyment to me.”
We often wish that our countrywomen had more health, more vigour, and more of the independence and self-reliance that spring from physical force. And the time is coming, when the want of these will cease to be their reproach, but, in the meanwhile, we thank God, that, as in all evil, there is some providential mitigation — a reflection of his love even in the tear-drop ; so the debility of our women is, in some slight degree, compensated by the gentleness, tenderness, and sympathy that accompanies it. If our wives lean, they find the strongest support — if they are weak and dependent, their husbands are, for the most part, considerate, generous, and devoted.
So, assuredly, was my friend Murray Winthrop. Emily
[p.167 ]
was a wife after the old Israelitish pattern, leaning in her very nature; “her desire was unto her husband”— desire, without the fear of patriarchal times. She was as free as if she were unyoked, for she had no wish independent of her husband's, and certainly no enjoyment without a partition with him. It was not that she lost her distinctive character, as certain colours are deadened by the proximity of stronger ones, but like a lesser stream, she blended with a fuller one — not losing her own power, but giving more force to his. She was not one of those silly, " just as Mr. So-and-so pleases" wives, or " I have not asked husband, but just as he thinks, I shall think." Emily thought and acted freely; the mainspring was in her heart, and that brought out the perfect accord. I have never seen a happier home than theirs — sanctified by the rites of religion, and cheerful with every social blessing and virtue.
Fifteen happy years passed on. They had six lovely children. They had not riches, but uniform prosperity. Winthrop had an honourable profession, and a certain income, and he delighted to surround his wife with every indulgence that could mitigate the evil of her ill-health. He could not afford a carriage, but a carryall with one horse, gave her the refreshment of a daily drive with her husband, more enjoying to her than if she had had a liveried coachman and half a dozen footmen in livery. Neither could they afford a country-seat, but they went for some happy weeks every summer to the sea-shore, or to the hill-country. They did not indulge in magnificent dinner-parties, but there was always a seat and a welcome for a friend at their table — and a good dinner, too, for Winthrop in his daily marketing, procured some dainty, to secure for Emily the blessing of a relished meal.
[p. 168]
She was sometimes unable to walk up and down stairs, but her husband carried her in his arms, and then, as she said, she was more to be envied than pitied.
I linger in their sunshine. The fifteen years were passed! Winthrop went to New Orleans to help a beloved and only brother through an entanglement with a fraudulent merchant. In order to extricate him, Winthrop pledged a large portion of his own property. If their lives were preserved, there was no risk of final loss ; and full of life and health, they scarcely thought of the contingency.
They sailed for New York. A tempest came on — The ship was dismasted and unmanageable. A part of the crew and passengers took to the boats ; Winthrop and his brother, by the captain's advice, remained on the wreck. Winthrop, at the moment they were lowering the boat, wrote in pencil on a card the following line to his wife, and gave it to one of the passengers who was abandoning the ship : — “In all events, trust in God, as I now do, my Emily. His will be done.”
The wreck went down in sight of the boats! They came to land. The news was sent to Emily by the passenger who transmitted to her her husband's last token, and she was plunged at once, without the poor preparation of an apprehension, from cheerful anticipations, into the desolation of widowhood. She would gladly have covered her face and died. The light of her life was gone. Not even her children reflected one ray of light to her. The impulse to action was lost — the springs of hope were dried up. No more smoothing of rough ways for her — no more anticipation of her wants — no more defence from hardship — no more providing — no more watching; no more companionship! She was alone! alone! How did that word strike, and strike upon her heart the knell
[p. 169]
of her departed life. The world was no longer the world she had lived in. Thick darkness had settled upon it. It was as if the sun had vanished, and the countless starry host had passed away. Day and night returned, but not to her came their sweet uses ; meal-times brought no refreshment; she lay down to wakeful nights and troubled dreams, and awoke to feel again, and again the first blow in all its activeness and freshness. Her children were as nothing to her. One blank despair had closed the access to all other passions. There was nothing left but a capacity for suffering. Where was her religion? — alas! alas! she had loved her husband supremely. She had forsaken her God — He had not forsaken her.
I have said that Emily derived no comfort from her children. In this I found some excuse for her, for it indicated to me that her mind had lost its balance, and that she had not the power to give herself to the holiest ministrations of nature. But there was one influence that seemed to reach her. Annie, her fourth child, a girl nine years old, had an uncommonly sweet voice, and when her mother was exhausted with mourning and watching, and her pulses were throbbing and every nerve was in tormenting action, she would send for Annie to sit by her bedside and sing to her. There was a magnetic influence in the child's tender voice. Her mother would become calm, and sometimes fall asleep. The poor little girl would sing on, infected with her mother's sadness, with tears in her eyes, no matter whether it were a verse from a hymn, or a stanza from a song. Her eldest sister Mary, a thoughtful girl, said to her one day, " I wish you very much, dear Annie, to learn two or three hymns through, and when you find mamma getting quiet, sing them to her." The docile child readily acquiesced. Mary, guided by the instincts of the
[p. 170]
highest feeling, selected the hymns, and on the next fitting occasion, when her poor mother was tranquilized, and the intervals between her heart-breaking sighs were longer, Annie sang the following beautiful hymn; she had till then sang those most familiar and hackneyed, and the words had flowed on the sound without producing any impression. The consciousness of having a purpose, varied the general monotony of her singing, and the first half line roused her mother's attention.
“Weep thou, O mourner ! but in lamentation
May thy Redeemer still remembered be;
Strong is his arm, the God of thy salvation,
Strong is his love to cheer and comfort thee.
“Cold though the world be in the way before thee,
Wail not in sadness, o'er the darkling tomb;
God in his love, siill watcheth kindly o'er thee,
Light shineth still above the clouds of gloom.
“Dimmed though thine eyes be with the tears of sorrow,
Night only known beneath the sky of time.
Faith can behold the dawning of a morrow
Glowing in smiles of love, and joy sublime.
“Change, then, mourner, grief to exultation ;
Firm and confiding may thy spirit be ;
Strong is his arm, the God of thy salvation ;
Strong is his love to cheer and comfort thee !"
Before Annie finished the hymn, her mother raised her head, and leaning on her elbow, she drank in every word, as if it were inspiration addressed by Heaven to her soul. When the child had finished, she drew her to her bosom and wept, for the first time, freely, tears that relieved her burdened heart —
[p. 171]
tears in which other thoughts than those of grief mingled. As soon as she could speak, she said, “Annie, sing that last verse to me again.”
Annie repeated it, and her mother repeated after her the last line —
“Strong is His love to cheer and comfort thee!”
“What love!” she added, “what patience — with me, a wretched rebel!”
“Oh, don't say so, mamma !” said Annie. “I have one more hymn to sing to you, that I think is beautiful; shall I sing it?”
“Yes; yes, dear child, sing on, and God grant me grace to hear,” she added, in mental prayer.
Annie sang “The Angels of Grief,” of Whittier, a poet who has given to his high poetic gifts the holiest consecration.
“With silence only as their benediction,
God's angels come
Where, in the shadow of a great affliction,
The soul sits dumb.
“Yet would we say what every heart approveth —
Our Father's will,
Calling to Him the dear ones whom he loveth,
Is mercy still.
“Not upon us or ours the solemn angel
Hath evil wrought;
The funeral anthem is a glad evangel;
The good die not.”
A few moments' silence followed. Emily then kissed her
[p. 172]
child, with a quiet tenderness that she had not before shown, and dismissed her. She did not remain in bed, sighing and lamenting, but she arose and passed the night in walking her chamber, or on her knees. She reproached herself bitterly. She felt that she had forgotten her religious profession — that she had denied her Lord in suffering her faith and love to be consumed in the furnace from which they should have come out purified. Now, for the first, it seemed to her that she received her husband's last words to her, — " Trust in God, as I now do, my Emily. His will be done." He, in his extremity, was willing, she thought. He rose above the storm — the tempest carried away my trust. He reposed in me — he thought, in that dreadful hour, that he might commit the children to my care. I have forgotten them, and every other duty — I have lain, like a vine torn from the tree that supported it, prostrate, withering, and dying, and I am a creature endowed with a capacity to do as well as to suffer. In my prosperity, I believed I was a Christian! — how have I sunk below the requirements of this profession. Have I been patient in tribulation? Have I submitted to the fellowship of suffering — of self-forgetfulness — of self-renunciation. No, no! I have thought only of myself. I have dared to expect that life should continue the joy it has been. And now, as I am resolved to look forward, and not back, God help me!
The next morning, to the astonishment of her children, Emily appeared among them. She took her accustomed place at table, and calmly served them. She even spoke to them of their father, and of the double duty that had now devolved upon her. She felt a faintness coming over, and desisted, wisely resolving to enter by degrees upon her new field of labour.
[p. 173]
Life had utterly changed to her. During her husband's life, she had been the object of constant indulgence, and a tenderness that fenced off not only evil, but whatever was uncomfortable and disagreeable. This is a false position; it cannot last. There is no petting in life. The school of Providence is a school of discipline and trial. Emily
“Had slept, and dreamed that life was beauty —
She waked, and found that life was duty.”
But this duty was to make her a higher and nobler being. Till now she had been gentle, sweet, and attractive, but loving a life of passive and indulged invalidism, she had had scarcely more to do with actual affairs, than the ladies of a Haram. If she had died then, she would have left no void but in the hearts of those that loved her. She had now to seal her sorrows up in her own breast; to endure patiently and silently her own loneliness; to make sunshine for others, while she felt that her whole life must wear out in chill dreary shadow. But she had religiously resolved, and she amazed her friends with her noiseless vigour. She found, on investigation, that her income was reduced to very narrow limits. She courageously and at once reduced her expenses to her means.
Some women deem it unfeminine to take care of their pecuniary affairs, and certainly their training and social arrangements are unfavourable to their qualification for this care. To Emily there was but one question; is this my duty? that ascertained she went forward and did it. She sought advice when she needed it, and aid where she required it, but, for the most part, she took care of her own concerns, and she “saw well to the ways of her household.”
She provided for the education of her children; she sighed
[p. 174]
to be obliged to renounce advantages for them which she had once counted upon as matters of course, but “It is well,” she said, — “the necessity of putting forth all their powers and making the most of all their means is better than Harvard for my boys, and the ‘first masters’ for my girls.” She now truly honoured her husband's memory, and justified his love.
She made her home a scene of cheerfulness to her children, a pleasant gathering-place to her friends.
What had become of the elegant leisure, the luxurious indolence of Emily Winthrop? They had given place to virtuous, productive activity. Where was the invalidism that all the appliances of love had but served to nurture?
No allopathy, homoeopathy, or hydropathy had been called in, but mental energy and heart-energy had supplied that wonderful power called nervous energy; and from day to day, and year to year her strength was equal to the demands upon it.
The young maiden invested with beauty and hope and promise, strikes our imagination. The happy wife has all our sympathies; but she who extracts patience and peace from her own privations, who converts her own weakness into strength for others, who in her own waste places produces flowers and fruits for them, who walks alone through rough places leaning on the Unseen — she — the sanctified widow — has our highest reverence.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Widowhood
Subject
The topic of the resource
Marriage, widowhood, faith, and resilience.
Description
An account of the resource
The narrator tells the story of Emily Winthrop and her journey from wife to widow and bereavement to peace.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Sedgwick, Catharine Maria.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
The Mirror of Life, edited by Louisa C. Tuthill, Philadelphia: Lindsay and Blakiston, 1847, pp. 165-74.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Lindsay and Blakiston
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1847
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
D. Gussman
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Document
"Absence"
"Angels of Grief"
"I Slept and Dreamed that Life was Beauty"
1847
allopathy
duty
Ellen Sturgis Hooper
Frances Anne Butler
gift book
homeopathy
hurricane
hydropathy
hymns
invalid
Israelite
John Greenleaf Whittier
John Milton
Louisa C. Tuthill
marriage
Paradise Lost
patriarchy
Providence
religion
ship wreck
tempest
The Mirror of Life
widows
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4acd7d0e4681a080424927351f219d03
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
1847
Document
A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text.
Text
Any textual data included in the document.
“Truth Versus Fiction.”
________
By Miss C. M. Sedgwick.
________
[p. 1]
“Are you writing for the December number of the Columbian Magazine?” asked a certain dear friend of mine, who came into my room just as I was sitting down to my desk yesterday.
“Yes, I shall begin this morning, if you do not prevent me.”
“Don’t flare up, my dear; I have no intention of preventing or hindering you. Have you a subject?”
“Yes; I was thinking of founding a little story upon the remarkable exploit of our village amazons the other day, but if you have anything better to suggest, my alms-basket is at your feet; I shall be grateful to you for any aid to my invention.”
“I do not expect your gratitude. I know there are no people more tenacious of the old proverb, “many hands spoil the broth,” than you writers. I was about—very modestly—to make a suggestion. You are going to write a story for the magazine; the country is drugged with stories.”
“No more of that, ‘if you love me, Hal.’”
My friend proceeded: “Suppose you abandon fiction for once.”
“Why—my story is founded on fact.”
“Rather a small foundation,” interposed one of those fair young amazons, whose brave deeds I would fain have illustrated. “Your foundations are like city lots; so narrow that you are compelled to run your structure far up into the air.”
“I have, at least, one advantage,” I replied. “This sort of structure does not betray its want of solidity.”
“Perhaps not,” resumed my friend, “but the unreality weakens the impression; so soon as an article is found to be ‘a leetle mixed,’ to borrow our Western friend’s expression, the adulterating matter violates the whole. But to come to the point, it seems to me that at this closing and solemn season of the year, it would be well to intersperse the stories of a magazine with something better adapted to the December of our lives.”
“But will our public take broth and biscuit, when all sorts of piquant preparations are got up for them by the cunning artistes of such works?”
“Try them. The late Mathew Carey, himself a doer of good, proposed that records of virtue in private life should be made. Such records might do something in this imitative world to stimulate the zeal of profitable emulation, or at least to awaken our confidence and hope in humanity. Pardon me if I repeat that however strong the assurance may be of a fact foundation, there is always uncertainty attached to a fictitious narrative. I speak for myself; on my mind there is all the difference in the effect of a real and an imaginary character that there is in the landscape of this morning—distinct, clear and defined in this brilliant sunshine—and that of yesterday, exaggerated and dimmed by the floating mist.”
I sighed over my craft, but I could not but acknowledge that there was justice in my friend’s criticism. My thoughts turned to those tenants of our new made graves to whom he had alluded; persons of no eventful history nor very marked character, but whose example, for that very reason, might better harmonize with general experience. They were hidden in their lowly estate and, like the lakes deep set in the bosom of our hills, they were a serene mirror of Heaven. And now that with the leafy veil that shrouded these, their natural types, their veil of life has fallen, it is fitting
[p. 2]
that the beam of their pure lives should extend beyond the very narrow limit of their mortal career.
The brilliant examples of those eminent men and women, whose biographies are trumpeted through the world, are not adapted to the every day’s wants of a medium condition. What have the wives of our American citizens, or those of our village artizans and country farmers, in common with Madame de Stael, Madame de Genlis, the mistresses of Louis Fourteenth, or even the “eminent women of England?”
Our home productions are better suited for our home market, and we believe there are women in our towns and villages whose domestic, unconscious virtues, not elicited or set off by uncommon circumstances, would be far more edifying to the million than the blazonry of great real names, or the possible perfection of imaginary characters. But the true story must be told, and this remains to be done by some master hand. Our humbler task is to record a few traits in the characters of two of our village maidens who have fallen with the falling year.
Harriet Gale was known among her own set as a quiet, kind-hearted, industrious girl, who performed her duties well and said nothing about them. They were to her the allotted work of life and she did them cheerfully, without any apparent thought of difficulty in the task or merit in its accomplishment. Two or three years since she was invited to live with a sister who was well established somewhere in the vast West.
She found a happy and exciting home there and was delighted with her improved condition. It must be confessed that our emigrants from New England, in their earnest struggle for the good things of this life, sometimes forget the commandment, “Honor thy father and thy mother.” Their thoughts are on their fair fresh fields, standing thick with corn, and they do not, like Joseph, remember the old man whom they may have left straitened at home. Our friend Harriet did remember him. Her father is aged, and hearing that her presence and filial ministry were becoming important to him, she did not hesitate for a moment to sacrifice her agreeable position to his comfort and, “true to the kindred points of Heaven and home,” she returned to him.
There is too little sympathy between youth and age; it is difficult to make activity and repose harmonize. The stream of love and care, sacrifice and benefaction, naturally runs down from parent to child, and to this order of nature the parent’s love is generally adequate. But when, as sometimes toward the close of life, the stream is to be turned and the child is to minister to the parent, the exigence requires an extraordinary virtue in both. The child’s mid-day must be somewhat dimmed, if not obscured—the parent’s chill twilight must be warmed and brightened—each must conform to the other.
“I thought it a privilege,” said Harriet to me, when first I made her acquaintance a few weeks before her death, “to come home and do what I could for father.”
“Father is always kind and always cheerful--he never lets anything worry him, come what will, and he has had enough to make other men disappointed and fractious--poor old man! I am afraid he will miss me! I said to him this morning, father, I don’t know who will keep your accounts and mend your pens when I am gone.”
“He did not answer me. He could not; but he will give up. I know he will—he is used to it!”
Here was no exaggeration of her importance—no selfish or egotistic fear that she should be forgotten.
Harriet had a step-mother, a name that is for the most part a signal for the revolt of the affections—a relation that enlists all the mean jealousies, selfishnesses and asperities that beset domestic life, and in truth is so involved in difficulties that few seem to think it worth while to struggle against its tendencies.
“It seems,” said Miss Gale to me, with a sweet smile, “when mother (her step-mother) enters into that door as if an angel entered my room. She has made this room seem to me like the gates of Paradise. I have many kind hands to smooth my pillow, but there is no hand like mother’s!”
I would abstain from the published praise of living worth, but I cannot forbear saying that there must have been an equal fidelity in both parties to make this happiness. God’s servants are the only true alchymists—they alone turn the baser metals to gold.
There are few of the relations of life that produce the happiness of which He who “set the solitary in families” has made them capable. How many barrels or half tilled fields are there in domestic life. We cease to wonder at the abuses of the conjugal relation—that relation most beset with difficulties and most liable to abuse—when we see parents and children, brothers and sisters, fail to reap the golden harvest of which their Heavenly Father has sown their fields at broad cast.
I saw Harriet Gale when she was fast sinking away with consumption. She was so cheerful and manifested so hearty an interest in all the village concerns, that I took it for granted that, like many persons in that disease, she was deluded as to its progress, and I was taken by surprise when our kind village dress-maker having sent her word she was prevented coming to watch with her, by some fancy dresses which must be finished for a fancy ball to be given on the next evening (the 4th of July), she said, “Well, I don’t envy them; death
[3]
looks pleasanter to me than life ever did. I have enjoyed living too!” she added, with a sweet smile.
How few there are who on such an occasion would not have indulged in some lamentation over the frivolity of the world, in which, alas! for poor human nature, a drop of pharisaical self-complacency would have mingled. Harriet Gale’s pure spirit was like those healthy atmospheres that disinfect whatever they embrace.
It was on the same eve of our festival of independence that, raising her feeble head and looking through the window at the stars, she said, “It is a clear night and I think we shall have a pleasant day to-morrow. I hope so, for it is a pity to have so many people disappointed.”
Such cheerful and gentle sympathies are rarely felt in the midst of suffering (Miss Gale’s was extreme at this time), and they are therefore more impressive than strong and bold, expressions of religious triumph.
She used no threadbare phrases to express her feelings, nor seemed for a moment to think there was anything unusual about them. Her face and tones were uniformly quiet and cheerful. She said to me with her habitual and never to be forgotten smile, “My happiest hours have been in this room!”
“But you have suffered here extremely,” I replied.
“Yes,” she answered, “but god is good, and if it were better that I should be removed with less suffering, I certainly should be.”
Harriet Gale had been from her early youth a member of the Methodist church; and her familiar friends looked upon her death but as the fitting conclusion to the Christian fidelity of her life.
Those strangers who were admitted to the privilege of seeing her in the last extremity, for the first time, saw how it was that the sting of death was taken away, and heard, mingling with her sweet tones, ‘It is I--be not afraid.’
‘The Lord taketh pleasure in his people. He will beautify the meek with salvation.’
________
It is but two Sundays since the body of another of these meek servants of their Lord was reverently borne into our beautiful little church and set down before the chancel, while her pastor interpreted the occasion to our hearts and held before us the instruction of her life and the consolation of her death.
She had endured a life-time of invalidism by bending like a reed before the relentless blast. For many years she had supported herself and contributed to the support of her family with her needle, and by doing, that worst paid of all labor, plain sewing. To “stitch, stitch, stitch,” was the business of her life, and it was done with such fidelity and completeness that her employers became her friends. She never brought reproach or self-reproach upon herself by unpunctuality. Her work when done was well done; so well that I believe it would be difficult to estimate the amount of comfort she has produced by her humble ministry. No seam of hers ripped, no button came off, no string was wanting. Thus a world of petty vexation was saved—a world of that chafing and fretting that makes up so much of the friction of life.
She was free from an infirmity very common among our people who, while they sell their services, soothe their pride, wounded by the implied inferiority, by telling you, with no thought of abating the money compensation but making a little more than the thing is worth, that they will do it to oblige you. Thus ‘to accommodate you’ you are permitted to board in a family at the highest price going, you have the ‘privilege’ of hiring a horse, or buying a turkey, or purely to oblige you, your sewing is done. Our friend was quite above this sort of cant. She wanted employment and she was grateful for it, and so the relation between her and her employer had its reciprocal blessing.
She knew the value of her moderate gains. They secured to her independence and gave a comfortable aspect to her family. Some years ago the price of sewing in our village was considerably advanced and it was recommended to her to raise her prices. “No,” she said, “I am quite satisfied with the provision my good God has made for me.”
Her pale face and attenuated form told the story of her life of bodily suffering, but that pale face was lighted up with contentment, patience, and cheerfulness, so that to her seemed already accomplished the promise to the faithful, ‘They shall be like Him for they shall see Him as He is.’ She saw her Father in her God.
Not long before her death a subscription paper was offered to her for money to adorn our burial pace. She cheerfully rose on her bed and wrote her name for the last time, saying, “It is pleasant for me to think that I shall be laid to rest in that beautiful place.”
Her life so gradually and gently faded away that neither she nor her friends were aware of the diminution of her light till it was nearly extinct. Then, when a loving and devoted sister told her she had not many hours to live, she asked to be left for a little while to herself. And when that sacred communion, which words could but imperfectly have interpreted, was over, she sang with a low but sustained voice a part of the hymn beginning
Could I but read my title clear
To mansions in the skies.
“How beautiful it is to die,” she said, and while the words were passing from her lips her soul
[p. 4]
realized its holy vision and passed from the dead body to eternal life.
So lived with sweet patience and so died with sublime faith our village seamstress--Harriet Greenleaf.
“Around thy earthly tomb let roses rise, an everlasting Spring, in memory of that delightful fragrance which was once from thy mild manners quietly exhaled.”
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Truth Versus Fiction
Subject
The topic of the resource
Heroism and virtue in everyday life.
Description
An account of the resource
The narrator is encouraged to abandon fiction and to write about real life, and tells the stories of two village women who passed in the previous year.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Sedgwick, Catharine M.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
The Columbian Magazine, [edited by John Inman and Robert A. West] Vol. 7 (January 1847): 1-4.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1847
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Charlene Avallone, L. Damon-Bach, D. Gussman
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Document
1847
4th of July
Consumption
daughters
Death
domesticity
fathers
fiction
filial duty
God
humility
invalid
labor
Louis XIV
Madame de Genlis
Madame de Stael
Mathew Carey
Methodist
New England
non-fiction
sewing
step-mother
submission
suffering
Ten Commandments
The Columbian Magazine
virtue
West