When we drift further down the column
and read the poetry about little Johnnie, the depression and spirits
acquires and added emphasis, and we experience tangible suffering.
When we saunter along down the column further still and read
the poetry about little Ferguson, the word torture but vaguely
suggests the anguish that rends us.
In the LEDGER (same copy referred to above) I find the following
(I alter surname, as usual):
Welch.--On the 5th inst., Mary C. Welch, wife of William B. Welch,
and daughter of Catharine and George W. Markland, in the 29th year
of her age.
A mother dear, a mother kind,
Has gone and left us all behind.
Cease to weep, for tears are vain,
Mother dear is out of pain.
Farewell, husband, children dear,
Serve thy God with filial fear,
And meet me in the land above,
Where all is peace, and joy, and love.
What could be sweeter than that? No collection of salient facts
(without reduction to tabular form) could be more succinctly stated
than is done in the first stanza by the surviving relatives,
and no more concise and comprehensive program of farewells,
post-mortuary general orders, etc., could be framed in any
form than is done in verse by deceased in the last stanza.
These things insensibly make us wiser and tenderer, and better.
Another extract:
Ball.--On the morning of the 15th inst.
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