No relatives were near enough to comfort and help the family in this time of trial, but neighbors and friends were unwearied in their kindness and sympathy. One instance worthy of mention was that of a young girl named Delia Foley, who was living with the Phelps family and to whom my mother had shown kindness as a stranger. She volunteered her services in preparing the dear form for burial, which was the more remarkable as the disease was of such a nature that there was great fear of contagion. This fact became known to me by accidentally finding Miss Foley, who was now a gray-haired woman, in the family of Hon. Joshua Hale of Newburyport, where she had been an honored and trusted servant for nearly forty years. It was a great pleasure to me to meet her, and to express to her, in such ways as I could, our gratitude for the great kindness rendered to the living and to the dead in the years so long gone by. I gladly record this as an instance of unselfish kindness all too rare in a world like this. It was in the sultry heat of summer that our great loss occurred, and the oppressive weather seemed to increase the burden of our sorrow. I well remember the desolation which settled down over the home on the evening of that first sorrowful day. To add to the gloom, the storm-clouds gathered darkly. The picture is forever printed in my memory. The father and his little motherless flock were alone in the upper chamber. The rain fell in torrents, the thunder crashed, and every flash of lightning lit up the surrounding country and showed the tall row of poplars in the distant lane, standing stiff and straight against the stormy sky. No wonder that my father gave way to the grief he could no longer control, and the children mingled their tears and sobs with his in unutterable sorrow. The funeral service was held in the Methodist Episcopal church, which was filled with friends who loved and honored my mother in life and sincerely mourned her death. A funeral sermon was preached by her pastor, Rev. M. N. Olmstead, from Acts xxvi, 8,--"Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you that God should raise the dead?"--in which the sorrowing family were led for comfort to the glorious certainty of the resurrection; and afterwards the sad procession took its way to the cemetery on the hillside. The little children with their black bonnets and frocks were a pathetic picture which appealed to the sympathy of every heart. The last solemn words were said, and we left her there to the peaceful rest of those who sleep in Jesus. The inscription on the stone above her resting-place--"Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord"--was never more fitly applied.