Soon after the marriage Sebastian and Anna started to keep a musical book together. Her name appears in her own hand, then her husband's cheery note that it was "_Anti-Calvinismus_ and _Anti-Melancholicus_." In this book and another begun in 1725 are compositions by himself and other men, copied in the handwritings of both husband and wife. There are arias written apparently for Anna Magdalena, and when in an unusually domestic humour he wrote in a song, "Edifying Reflections of a Smoker" in D minor, she transposed it up to G minor in her own hand--doubtless that she might sing it to him while he puffed contentment in uxorious ease. Later on is a wedding-poem, gallantly beginning, "Irh Diener, werthe Jungfer Braut Viel Glücke zur heutgen Freude!" and exclaiming that at the sight of her in her garland and wedding-garb the heart laughs out in rapture;--and what wonder that lips and breast overflow with joy. There are rules he wrote out for her instruction in thorough-bass with a note that others must be taught orally, and there is a love-song for soprano, which he must have written for her, to judge from the words, "Willst du dein Herz mir schenken." Upton declares this song to have been written during and for their first courtship. A portrait of this ideal wife was painted by Cristofori and passed into the keeping of her stepson, Karl Philipp Emanuel Bach, but alas, it is lost while so many a less interesting face is repeated in endless pictures. Twenty-eight years after her marriage this faithful woman stood by her husband's side in his blindness and through the two operations by the English surgeon in Leipzig. How must she have rejoiced when on July 18, 1750, he suddenly found that he could see and endure with delight the blessed sunshine! How her heart must have sunk when a few hours later he was stricken with apoplexy and a high fever that gave him only ten more days of life! At his death-bed stood his wife, his daughters, his youngest son, a pupil, and a son-in-law. An old chorale of his was, as Spitta says, "floating in his soul, and he wanted to complete and perfect it." The original name had been, "When we are in the highest need," but he changed the name by dictation now to "Before thy throne with this I come" (_Vor deiner Thron tret ich hiemit_). The preacher said he had "fallen calmly and blessedly asleep in God," and he was buried in St. Thomas' churchyard; but later the grave was lost sight of, and his bones are now as unhonoured as his memory is revered. It is a dismal task to write the epilogue to the beautiful life and death of this father of music. The woman who had made his life so happy and aided him with hand and voice and heart,--what had she done to deserve the dingy aftermath of her fidelity?