" A convulsive sob broke out of the bosom of the handmaiden
who was known to have been affianced to one of the dead, and for a moment
the address of Mark was interrupted. But when silence again ensued, he
continued, the subject leading him, by a transition that was natural, to
allude to his own sorrows. "Death hath been no stranger in my habitation,"
he said. "His shaft fell heaviest, when it struck her, who, like those
that have here fallen, was in the pride of her youth, and when her soul
was glad with the first joy of the birth of a man-child! Thou who sittest
on high!" he added, turning a glazed and tear less eye to heaven; "thou
knowest how heavy was that blow, and thou hast written down the strivings
of an oppressed soul. The burthen was not found too heavy for endurance.
The sacrifice hath not sufficed; the world was again getting uppermost in
my heart. Thou didst bestow an image of that innocence and loveliness that
dwelleth in the skies, and this hast thou taken away, that we might know
thy power. To this judgment we bow. If thou hast called our child to the
mansions of bliss, she is wholly thine, and we presume not to complain;
but if thou hast still left her to wander further in the pilgrimage of
life, we confide in thy goodness.
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