The spring came, and with it, a month or two earlier than usual, our beloved ones returned to the longed for homestead, around which were so many tender recollections of a happy, very happy life. How your dear mother clung to that precious father! How she feasted upon his every look. She followed him every where; in his rides, in his strolls through the garden. She accompanied him at night, and at all times to Church, preferring (when we did not ride) to take the long walk with "father" to going with "mother" across the street to "the Second Church." When business called him away from his much prized domestic circle, she would walk, with her arm wrapped around him, to the door, and follow him with her eyes down the street until out of sight. After her return home that spring, when she first saw his portrait, that he had had taken for her, she wept, and could not tell why, except that it was "faultless." And now, my dear children, I am treading so closely upon that last morning, that I begin to tremble. On Friday, June 3, 1859, your dear grandfather arose early, and drove, as he was wont to do, to the garden. While there he gathered and tied together a bunch of flowers for his daughter, and when I came down stairs to breakfast he was sitting at the window, where he had evidently read the morning paper and laid it aside, and was enjoying the sports of his little "sonny boys" who were at play on the grass plot. I gave him my last "good morning" kiss, little thinking that in joy our lips would no more be pressed, and turning to the beautiful bouquet, which was placed in a glass of water at our daughter's plate, I took it up and admired it. He had gathered his first fuchsia to put in her bouquet.