The niece of Madame de Genlis, Madame Ducrest, then a struggling music teacher in Paris, to whom Pamela out of her own slender resources had found means to be kind, came to nurse the poor sick woman. Her first care, when she saw the danger, was to send for a holy priest, M. L’Abbé de la Madeleine. “He came. His zeal, his persuasive eloquence, the simple unction of his exhortations did far more for her peace of soul than we had dared to hope. He inspired our dear invalid with a true joy at quitting this world, where she had suffered so much.” The numbered moments of her life passed rapidly and now _the_ hour had come. Sister Ursula, the Sister of Charity, who shared with Madame Ducrest the office of nurse, began to recite the prayers for the departing soul. “The sufferer even then replied aloud: insensibly her voice became broken and feeble, and at length the words became unintelligible, though her lips still moved in prayer. Very soon her eyes, which were raised to Heaven, grew dull, her hands grasped convulsively the crucifix which she held, and in a few moments she was no more.” ------------------------------------------------------------------------ THE SISTER OF HENRY JOY McCRACKEN ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Sister of Henry Joy McCracken MARY ANNE MCCRACKEN (1770-1866)[84] “I have been coming all the night long Like a little lamb in the midst of a great flock of sheep And how should I find my little brother but he dead before me.” —_The Keen for Fair-Haired Donough._ Footnote 84: _Authorities_: Madden’s “United Irishmen” (Vol. II., Second Series, First Edition, 1843); Robert M. Young, “Historical Notices of Old Belfast,” 1896. “I THINK of all human loves that of a Sister is the most abiding and unselfish. In a mother’s love there is a kind of identification with her child, his triumphs, his defeats, which by the reflection on herself takes away the absolute disinterestedness. Conjugal love is more intense, but for that reason more intermittent. But there’s not a trace of self in that earnest wistful gaze which a beloved sister casts after the poor young fellow who has just gone out from the sanctity of home-life into the world’s arena; nor a thought of self in the way the silent heart broods over shattered hopes, and takes back to its sanctuary the broken relics of the idol, once worshipped, now, alas! only to be protected from the gaze of a scornful world.”[85] Footnote 85: “Under the Cedars and the Stars,” p. 192.