Mary S. Peake | Page 8

longing spirit went home. Washington's birthday was her birthday to a higher life. After many a sleepless night, this last evening she was permitted to rest quietly, till the midnight cry struck upon her ear, "Behold, the bridegroom cometh!" It found her ready, with her lamp trimmed and burning. Calling for her mother, she threw herself into her embrace, as her spirit did into the embrace of her Saviour.
Just at midnight, on all the ships in Hampton Roads,--and which are so near us that the cry on shipboard is distinctly heard on shore,--the watchman cried aloud, as usual, "Twelve o'clock, and all's well!" The sound penetrated the sick chamber, and the dying invalid apparently heard it. She smiled sweetly, and then breathed her last sigh, and entered upon that rest which remains for the people of God.
The next morning, which was the Sabbath, I called, and found her husband and mother bearing up under their bereavement with Christian fortitude. They could smile through their tears; though they wept, it was not as those who have no hope. In the services of the day, the bereaved were remembered in fervent, sympathizing prayer. We all felt sorely afflicted, and would have grieved, but for the thought that our temporary loss was her eternal gain. In the evening, a prayer meeting was held till midnight in the room where her body lay; but all felt like saying, She is not here; her spirit is with her Father and our Father, her God and our God.
On Monday, at eleven o'clock, a large concourse assembled at her funeral. We met in her school room, at the Brown Cottage, a place sweetened and hallowed by associations with her crowning labors, and thus a fit place for these leave-taking services. The occasion was one of mingled sorrow and joy. The services were begun by singing, according to her request, the familiar hymn,--
"I would not live alway,"--
to the tune of "Sweet Home," in which it is generally sung by the people here, with the chorus,--
"Home! Home! Sweet, sweet home! There's no place like heaven, there's no place like home!"
The impression was very thrilling. Chaplain Fuller, of the sixteenth Massachusetts regiment, offered prayer--praying fervently for the bereaved mother and husband, and for little Daisy, who would one day realize more than now a mother's worth by her loss. We then sung, according to her request, her favorite hymn, "The Christian's Home in Glory," or "Rest for the Weary." I selected for my text Hebrews 4:9--"There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God." At the conclusion of the sermon the children sang,--
"Here we suffer grief and pain; Here we meet to part again; In heaven we part no more. Oh, that will be joyful, Joyful, joyful, joyful, Oh, that will be joyful, When we meet to part no more.
"Little children will be there, Who have sought the Lord by prayer, From every Sabbath school. Oh, that will be joyful, &c.
"Teachers, too, shall meet above, And our pastors, whom we love, Shall meet to part no more. Oh, that will be joyful," &c.
The coffin was then opened, and we took the last, lingering look at a face whose heavenly lineaments I can never forget.
In long procession, in which her recent charge bore a prominent part, we accompanied her to her resting place. The place of her sepulture is about a hundred yards north of the seminary, on the bank of the inlet. A live-oak tree stands at her head, projecting its emblematic evergreen foliage over the sod-roofed tenement.
The departed selected, as a remembrance of her immortality, the 17th verse of the 118th Psalm, "I shall not die, but live." The thirty-nine years of her earthly existence were but the prelude to a life beyond the sky; and while her spirit survives the ravages of death, her name shall live in memory.
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In this unpretending memoir may its subject live again, and not in vain. May teachers gather from her example fresh inspiration, and the benevolent Christian fresh impulses in doing good. May they who enjoy advantages superior to those of her proscribed race, take heed lest the latter, by the better improvement of the little light enjoyed, rise up in the judgment and condemn them.
Let Sabbath scholars, and children of pious parentage and Christian education, who from earliest years have not only been taught to lisp the Saviour's name, but to read it, pity the slave child, shut out from such advantages, and give heed to instruction, lest, having more given and unimproved, they be beaten with many stripes. Let all who have an interest at the throne of grace remember little Daisy, and pray that she may walk in her mother's footsteps, as far as she followed Christ, only following more closely, attaining still greater