He rests from his labours and his works do follow him. Yours
remain. It is needless for me to say it, for you must all know it
better than I, he counted it among his mercies that a work had been
raised up for you, which when father and mother were gone would be
to you the work and the blessing of your life. He evidently
acknowledged this as God's calling to you, and as one of the
thoughts in which he was greatly comforted in looking forward upon
your future life.
Many other writers dwelt upon the unsparing labour and self-denying zeal
of her father, and all recognised that she, the daughter so near his
heart and always the object of his most tender love and watchful care,
must be the one most deeply stricken by the pain of separation.
"To you, I imagine, the blow will come heaviest," wrote Mrs. Powell; and
this sentiment is repeated in almost every letter.
A letter from the Secretary of her own Association, informing her of a
vote of condolence passed by the Committee, begins, oddly enough, with
"I have the _pleasure_ to inform you,"
The blind workmen and workwomen did their best to express their regret
at the death of "his lordship the Bishop," and a note is enclosed to her
by the Rev. B. Hayley, written by a poor fellow in the Chichester Union,
"just to show what the poor, the very poorest in the diocese, think of
your dear father."
The Rev. Dr. Swainson, Canon of Chichester, now Master of Christ's
College, Cambridge, heard that Bessie's grief was heightened by the fact
that she had spent the last fortnight before her father's death in
London, engrossed by the work of the Deputation to Lord de Grey. His
letter of sympathy and consolation may be as helpful to others as it was
to her, and it is therefore inserted unabridged.
SPRINGFIELD, NEWNHAM, CAMBRIDGE,
_30th March 1870_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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