I was left alone with the lay-reader, and with the dead. The enthusiasm of the scene had fled, and the feelings of a son triumphed. Past years rushed like a tide over his memory. The distant, but undimmed impressions of infancy and childhood,--the planting of that once wild waste,--the changes of those years which had sprinkled his temples with gray hairs,--all, with their sorrows and their joys, came back, associated with the lifeless image of his beloved sire. In the bitterness of bereavement, he covered his face, and wept. That iron frame which had borne the hardening of more than half a century, shook, like the breast of an infant, when it sobbed out its sorrows. I waited until the first shock of grief had subsided. Then, passing my arm gently within his, I repeated, "I heard a voice from heaven saying,--Write, from henceforth, blessed are the dead, who die in the Lord." Instantly raising himself upright, he responded in a voice whose deep inflections sank into my soul, "Even so, saith the spirit, for they rest from their labors, and their works do follow them." I remained to attend the funeral obsequies of the Patriarch. In the heart of their territory was a shady dell, sacred to the dead. It was surrounded by a neat enclosure, and planted with trees. The drooping branches of a willow, swept the grave of the mother of the colony. Near her, slumbered her youngest son. Several other mounds swelled around them, most of which, by their small size, told of the smitten flowers of infancy. To this goodly company, we bore him, who had been revered as the father and exemplar of all. With solemn steps, his descendants, two and two, followed the corpse. I heard a convulsive and suppressed breathing, among the more tender of the train; but when the burial service commenced, all was hushed. And never have I more fully realised its surpassing pathos and power, than when from the centre of that deep solitude, on the brink of that waiting grave, it poured forth its consolation. "Man, that is born of woman, hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up and is cut down like a flower. He fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay. In the midst of life, we are in death. Of whom may we seek succor but of thee, Oh Lord!--who for our sins art justly displeased? Yet, O Lord God most holy--O God most mighty,--O holy and most merciful Saviour, deliver us not into the bitter pains of eternal death. Thou knowest, Lord, the secrets of our hearts, shut not thy most merciful ears to our prayers, but spare us, O Lord most holy,--O God most mighty,--O holy and merciful Saviour,--suffer us not, at our last hour, for any pains of death to fall from thee."