The fashionable daughters
went with their mother. The good old man, after a short sickness, died
in great peace. I was sent for to officiate at the funeral-service.
There was a large gathering of people, and a brave parade of all the
externals of grief, but it was mostly dry-eyed grief, so far as I could
see. At the grave, just as the sun that was sinking in the ocean threw
his last rays upon the spot, and the first shovelful of earth fell upon
the coffin that had been gently lowered to its resting-place, there was
a piercing shriek from one of the carriages, followed by the
exclamation:
"What shall I do? How can I live? I have lost my all! O! O! O!"
It was the dead man's wife. Significant glances and smiles were
interchanged by the bystanders. Approaching the carriage in which the
woman was sitting, I laid my hand upon her arm, looked her in the face,
and said:
"Hush!"
She understood me, and not another sound did she utter. Poor woman! She
was not perhaps as heartless as they thought she was. There was at least
a little remorse in those forced exclamations, when she thought of the
dead man in the coffin; but her eyes were dry, and she stopped very
short.
Another incident recurs to me that points in a different direction.
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