rds through the land,-these gradually resigned their
functions, and the active but tired brain, which had held on so bravely,
notwithstanding the injury it had received in early life, began to share
in the general decline of the vital powers. There was no disease, no
deflection of aim nor confusion of thought, but a gentle failure of
faculties used up by near a century's wear and tear.

He was somewhat grieved and harassed by the spiritual problems
which were always the chief occupation of his mind, and which he now
perceived, without being able to grapple with them; and life, with
such mental and physical limitations, became very weary to him. But his
constitution was so sound, and his health so perfect, that he might have
lingered yet a long time, but for his grief and disappointment in the
unexpected death [354] of Dr. Bellows, Jan. 30, 1882. When that beloved
friend, upon whose inspiring ministrations he had counted to soothe his
own last hours, was called first, the shock perceptibly loosened his
feeble hold on life; and truly it seemed as if the departing spirit did
his last service of love by helping to set free the elder friend whom
he could no longer comfort on earth. He "Allured to brighter worlds, and
led the way;" nor was my father long in following him. For a few weeks
there was little outward change in his habits; he ate as usual the
few morsels we could induce him to taste; he slept several hours every
night, and, supported by faithful arms, he came to the table for each
meal till within four days of his death. But he grew visibly weaker, and
would sit long silent, his head bent on his breast. We gathered together
in those sad days, and read aloud the precious series of Dr. Bellows's
letters to us all, but principally to him,-letters radiant with beauty,
vigor, wit, and affection; we read them with thankfulness and with
sorrow, with laughter and with tears, and he joined in it all, but grew
too weary to listen, and never heard the whole. He was confined to his
bed but three days. A slight indigestion, which yielded to remedies,
left him too weak to rally. He was delirious most of the time when
awake, and was soothed by anodynes; but though he knew us all, he was
too sick and restless for talk, trying [355] sometimes to smile in
answer to his wife's caresses, but hardly noticing anything. At one
o'clock in the morning of March 21st, his sad moans suddenly ceased, and
he opened his sunken eyes wide,--so wide