In the chapter just finished, we casually mentioned that
Lizzie, instead of growing stronger, had drooped day by
day, until to all, save the fond hearts which watched her,
she seemed surely passing away. But they to whom her
presence was as sunlight to the flowers, shut their eyes to

[figure description] Page 231.[end figure description]

the dreadful truth, refusing to believe that she was leaving
them. Oftentimes, during the long winter nights,
would Mr. Dayton steal softly to her chamber, and kneeling
by her bedside, gaze in mute anguish upon the wasted
face of his darling. And when from her transparent
brow and marble cheek he wiped the deadly night-sweats,
a chill, colder far than the chill of death, crept over his
heart, and burying his face in his hands he would cry,
“Oh, Father, let this cup pass from me!”

As spring approached, she seemed better, and the father's
heart grew stronger, and Lucy's step was lighter, and
grandma's words more cheerful, as hope whispered, “she
will live.” But when the snow was melted from off the
hillside, and over the earth the warm spring sun was shining,
when the buds began to swell and the trees to put
forth their young leaves, there came over her a change so
fearful, that with one bitter cry of sorrow, hope fled forever;
and again, in the lonely night season, the weeping
father knelt and asked for strength to bear it when his
best loved child was gone.

“Poor Harry!” said Lizzie one day to Anna, who was
sitting by her, “Poor Harry, if I could see him again;
but I never shall.”

“Perhaps you will,” answered Anna. “I wrote to
him three weeks ago, telling him to come quickly.”

“Then he will,” said Lizzie; “but if I should be dead
when he comes, tell him how I loved him to the last, and
that the thought of leaving him was the sharpest pang I
suffered.”

There were tears in Anna's eyes as she kissed the cheek
of the sick girl, and promised to do her bidding. After
a moment's pause, Lizzie added, “I am afraid Harry is
not a christian, and you must promise not to leave him

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until he has a well-founded hope that again in heaven I
shall see him.”

Anna promised all, and then as Lizzie seemed exhausted,
she left her and returned home. One week from that day
she stood once more in Lizzie's sick-room, listening, for
the last time, to the tones of the dying girl, as she bade
her friends adieu. Convulsed with grief, Lucy knelt by
the bedside, pressing to her lips one little clammy hand,
and accusing herself of destroying her sister's life. In
the farthest corner of the room sat Mr. Dayton. He
could not stand by and see stealing over his daughter's
face the dark shadow which falls but once on all. He
could not look upon her, when o'er her soft, brown eyes
the white lids closed forever. Like a naked branch in
the autumn wind, his whole frame shook with agony, and
though each fibre of grandma's heart was throbbing with
anguish, yet, for the sake of her son, she strove to be
calm, and soothed him as she would a little child. Berintha,
too, was there, and while her tears were dropping
fast, she supported Lizzie in her arms, pushing back from
her pale brow the soft curls, which, damp with the moisture
of death, lay in thick rings upon her forehead.

“Has Harry come?” said Lizzie.

The answer was in the negative, and a moan of disappointment
came from her lips.

Again she spoke: “Give him my bible,—and my curls;—
when I am dead let Lucy arrange them,—she knows
how,—then cut them off, and the best, the longest, the
brightest is for Harry, the others for you all. And tell—
tell—tell him to meet—me in heaven—where I'm—going—
going.”

A stifled shriek from Lucy, as she fell back, fainting,
told that with the last word, “going,” Lizzie had gone to
heaven!

[figure description] Page 233.[end figure description]

An hour after the tolling bell arrested the attention of
many, and of the few who asked for whom it tolled,
nearly all involuntarily sighed and said, “Poor Harry!
Died before he came home!”

It was the night before the burial, and in the back parlor
stood a narrow coffin containing all that was mortal
of Lizzie Dayton. In the front parlor Bridget and another
domestic kept watch over the body of their young
mistress. Twelve o'clock rang from the belfry of St.
Luke's church, and then the midnight silence was broken
by the shrill scream of the locomotive, as the
eastern train thundered into the depot. But the senses
of the Irish girls were too profoundly locked in sleep
to heed that common sound; neither did they hear the
outer door, which by accident had been left unlocked,
swing softly open, nor saw they the tall figure which
passed by them into the next room,—the room where
stood the coffin.

Suddenly through the house there echoed a cry, so
long, so loud, so despairing, that every sleeper started
from their rest, and hurried with nervous haste to the
parlor, where they saw Harry Graham, bending in wild
agony over the body of his darling Lizzie, who never before
had turned a deaf ear to his impassioned words of
endearment. He had received his sister's letter, and
started immediately for home, but owing to some delay,
did not reach there in time to see her alive. Anxious to
know the worst, he had not stopped at his father's house,
but seeing a light in Mr. Dayton's parlors, hastened
thither. Finding the door unlocked, he entered, and on
seeing the two servant girls asleep, his heart beat quickly

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with apprehension. Still he was unprepared for the
shock which awaited him, when on the coffin and her
who slept within it his eye first rested. He did not faint,
nor even weep, but when his friends came about him with
words of sympathy, he only answered, '`Lizzie, Lizzie,
she is dead!”

During the remainder of that sad night, he sat by the
coffin pressing his hand upon the icy forehead until its
coldness seemed to benumb his faculties, for when in the
morning his parents and sister came, he scarcely noticed
them; and still the world, misjudging ever, looked upon
his calm face and tearless eye, and said that all too lightly
had he loved the gentle girl, whose last thoughts and
words had been of him. Ah, they knew not the utter
wreck the death of that young girl had made, of the bitter
grief, deeper and more painful because no tear-drop
fell to moisten its feverish agony. They buried her, and
then back from the grave came the two heart-broken men,
the father and Harry Graham, each going to his own
desolate home, the one to commune with the God who
had given and taken away, and the other to question the
dealings of that providence which had taken from him
his all.

Days passed, and nothing proved of any avail to win
Harry from the deep despair which seemed to have settled
upon him. At length, Anna bethought her of the
soft, silken curl which had been reserved for him. Quickly
she found it, and taking with her the bible, repaired to
her brother's room. Twining her arms around his neck,
she told him of the death-scene, of which he before had
refused to hear. She finished her story by suddenly holding
to view the long, bright ringlet, which once adorned
the fair head now resting in the grave. Her plan was
successful, for bursting into tears, Harry wept nearly two

[figure description] Page 235.[end figure description]

hours. From that time, he seemed better, and was frequently
found bathed in tears, and bending over Lizzie's
bible, which now was his daily companion.

Lucy, too, seemed greatly changed. She had loved her
sister as devotedly as one of her nature could love, and for
her death she mourned sincerely. Lizzie's words of love
and gentle persuasion had not been without their effect,
and when Mr. Dayton saw how kind, how affectionate and
considerate of other people's feelings his daughter had become,
he felt that Lizzie had not died in vain.

Seven times have the spring violets blossomed, seven
times the flowers of summer bloomed, seven times have the
autumnal stores been gathered in, and seven times have the
winds of winter sighed over the New England hills, since
Lizzie was laid to rest. In her home there have been few
changes. Mr. Dayton's hair is whiter than it was of old,
and the furrows on his brow deeper and more marked.
Grandma, quiet and gentle as ever, knits on, day after
day, ever and anon speaking of “our dear little Lizzie,
who died years ago.”

Lucy is still unmarried, and satisfied, too, that it should
be so. A patient, self-sacrificing christian, she strives to
make up to her father for the loss of one over whose
memory she daily weeps, and to whose death she accuses
herself of being accessory. Dr. Benton and his rather
fashionable wife live in their great house, ride in their
handsome carriage, give large dinner parties, play chess
after supper, and then the old doctor nods over his evening
paper, while Berintha nods over a piece of embroidery,
intended to represent a little dog chasing a butterfly,

[figure description] Page 236.[end figure description]

and which would as readily be taken for that as for anything
else, and for anything else as that.

Two years ago a pale young missionary departed to
carry the news of salvation to the heathen land. Some
one suggested that he should take with him a wife, but
he shook his head mournfully, saying, “I have one wife
in heaven.” The night before he left home, he might
have been seen, long after midnight, seated upon a grassy
grave, where the flowers of summer were growing.
Around the stone which marks the spot, rose bushes have
clustered so thickly as to hide from view the words there
written, but push them aside and you will read, “Our
darling Lizzie.”

p598-242

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