Putting on his glasses he said,
"Children, what have we here. It is not my birthday." Not a word was
said while he read the letter, then he opened the box and saw the
bright golden slug. He laid down his glasses and looked over at me and
said, "So Rosana Margaret, it was by your cheerful handiwork that the
last burden has been lifted." I quietly lifted up my face and said,
"Father, Tilly helped me and we are glad you won't have to trouble any
more." He then lifted up his hands and said, "Let us ask God's
blessing." If prayer is the soul's sincere desire, uttered or
unexpressed, then I think the offering on Abel's altar was not more
acceptable before the Lord than was the prayer of my most reverent
father as he prayed for a blessing on his family, far from the scenes
of his early life and all that went to make him happy when he and
mother went hand in hand out into God's vineyard to do God's work, he
as an ordained man of God and she an ideal minister's wife who never
faltered in her duty through the roughest pioneer days in the swamps
of Illinois to the last journey to California to build up the Church
of God even here in the farthest west by the Golden Gate. All that was
mortal of these two faithful pilgrims rests in the new cemetery in
Stockton, always united in life and in death were not divided:
"What's this that steals, that steals upon my breath,
Is it death? is it death?
If this be death, I soon shall be
From every sin and sorrow free.
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