“Can I ever forget her presence and her image under my own roof during three of the most painfully anxious days of my life, watching through the long, long winter night; wakeful to every sound, to every movement, to every want; the low, soothing voice, the noiseless step, the gentle hand wiping away the clammy sweat, and standing by us, patiently and willingly, until the crisis was past? (Mrs. C. dangerously ill of pneumonia is the occasion referred to.) I could not but refer to this, not only as an expression of grateful acknowledgement which is justly due, but also as speaking for many others to whom she was a friend indeed, because a friend in need--just that kind of need in which, above all other needs, we feel the weakest, the most utterly powerless in our own unaided selves. “In this way, and in these kind offices, she may be said wherever residing and through all the mature years of her life, to have gone about doing good, unostentatious, unpublished good; and the crowning beauty of it all, as respects her, is that she claimed no merit for these disinterested acts, expected no human recompense, but performed them; went at any one’s call, because she deemed it her duty to go, or because it was the impulse of her sympathizing heart. She was truly the Good Samaritan of her sex.” The Rev. Mr. Gardner also said: “And oh! how much we shall all miss her; we shall miss her as a busy parish worker; we shall miss her in the Sunday-school, and her class of little children will sadly miss her; so will the Ladies’ Sewing Society miss her, for she was one of its chief workers, but memorials of her in the Society’s work will long remain--even longer, perhaps, than any of us shall live to see. And the sick and afflicted will most surely miss her; for it may be said of her as it was of her Divine Master, she ‘went about doing good.’ For this work she had a peculiar fitness--going in and out among the sick as if it were her special calling. Many are the families where she has ministered, and with one voice they will attest all that I have said of her. But above all, her family will miss her--the wife and mother, the sister and near relative are gone, gone before, not lost.” And the Rev. Mr. Howard said of her: “Of the estimable lady whose death we commemorate, it may be said that one has been taken out from the bosom of this church and of this community, who was inspired and warmed with all its life, religious, social and domestic; alive to, and promoting according to her ability, everything which conduced to its welfare and improvement. All the consolation which may ever be legitimately drawn from Christian character, may be justly claimed and appropriated here. She was indeed a good woman, and one of the saints of God.” [Illustration] CHAPTER XXV.