Night, solemn and holy! How infinite was the mercy that gave thee to spread thy star-spangled mantle over the tired earth, hushing to repose its misery, and hiding its crime. Night, pure and beautiful! The fitting time for the soul of the innocent to ascend to a better land. Midnight had chimed on the old church clock, and the whole world seemed sleeping as if bound by a spell. The stars were looking down from the far off heavens, and the large moon was sinking behind the long low clouds in the west, gilding leaf and fountain with its brightness, and shedding a holy radiance on the face of the dying girl. Emma was reclining on a low couch by the open window, and save the low sighing of the wind all was still in that room of death. The agony of suffering that all day had racked her frame, was now passed away, and she lay in a calm slumber, with her head upon her mother’s bosom. George Atherton knelt beside the couch with her hands clasped in his, and her father stood near, silent beneath the pressure of a wo too deep for tears. The last hour had come—they knew that she was dying. Is it not ever thus? The loveliest, the most utterly beloved are ever the first to leave us. Those on whom we most leaned for support and comfort during this earth-pilgrimage are ever the first victims to the unerring shaft of death. And _it is well_. Fondly as I have loved and deeply as I have mourned for the dead, I feel that it is well. “The branches are lopped off that the tree may fail the easier.” The prop to which we clung is torn away that the bleeding tendrils of these wrung hearts may wind themselves more closely around the Rock of Ages. The cords that bound the spirit to earth are severed, that its flight may be unimpeded toward that heavenly city, that New Jerusalem, where God shall wipe away all tears. How shall I tell of the parting—the _final_ parting. How shall mortal language describe the triumph of stern relentless Death over the love of human hearts. He who sitteth in his calm glory above the reach of earthly sorrow—He to whose bosom that cherished one is now departed—He alone can tell the anguish of that trial. She left them. She who had been the sunlight of their existence, turned from them, and meekly and cheerfully trod the lone valley of Death. But she had listened to “the spoken words,” she had caught a glimpse of the glories of her heavenly home, she had heard a faint echo of the harpings of an immortal hymn, and she raised her eyes with glad faith to the throne of the Eternal, and leaning on the arm of her beloved she entered into her rest.