I felt that I knew Christ personally through him. He always spoke of Him as his dearest friend, and he always lived in perfect, loving allegiance to God in Him. Now I know him as I know Christ,--as a spirit only, and his sudden withdrawal is only an ascension to Him, in the immortal life. Shut into my sick-room, I have seen none of the gloom of the burial; I know him alive, with Christ, from the dead, forevermore. Where he is, life must be. He lived only in realities here, and he is entering into the heart of them now. “What a new splendor in heaven!” was my first thought of him, after one natural burst of sorrow. What great services he has found! How gloriously life, with its immortal opportunities, must be opening to him! He,--one week here,--the next there,--and seen no more here again. The very suddenness of his going makes the other life seem the real one, rather than this. And a man like this is the best proof God ever gives human beings of their own immortality. I treasure my last memories of him, the last sermon I heard him preach at Trinity, at the October Communion; the last time I saw him there, just before Christmas, and the last warm pressure of his hand, and the sunlike smile as he spoke to me at the church door; the last note he wrote me when he spoke of Mr. Whittier in the other life, with such reverent love: “Think what--_where_--he is now!”--even as we are thinking of him. It seems as if God gave me these last three years of intimate friendship with him, in connection with the Church, as the crowning spiritual blessing of my life. The rest of it must be consecrated to the noblest ends, like his. In March and early April, 1893, Miss Larcom’s heart-trouble was rapidly developing into an alarming condition, and she realized that the end must soon come. Her life had reached its climax in the little book, “The Unseen Friend,” in which she had written her last and greatest religious message to the world. More of her friends were on the “other side” than here, and her eyes eagerly sought the visions beyond. Her old pupils and friends remembered her during those weary days of suffering in the Hoffman House, Boston. Her beloved niece, Miss Lucy Larcom Spaulding (now Mrs. Clark) was with her constantly, ministering to her needs. Some sent her flowers, which she loved so dearly; others, fruit; one desired to send from the West a luxurious bed; and one sent a reclining-chair. The old cook, Norah, at Norton, asked the privilege of making graham bread for her. Her old scholars remembered her more substantially, by a loving gift, in those days when her pen was forced into idleness. She painfully felt the restraints of her illness. Her nights were full of distress. In a half-amused way, she said, “I never knew what it was to be really sick. I knew people had to stay in bed, and have the doctor, but I thought they slept at night.”