Page:Anne Bradstreet and her time.djvu/374

358 "I being absent fro her lost the opportunity of committing to memory her pious & memorable xpressions uttered in her sicknesse. O yt the good Lord would give unto me and mine a heart to walk in her steps, considering what the end of her Conversation was, yt so wee might one day have a happy & glorious greeting."

Dorothy, the wife of Seaborn Cotton and the namesake of her grandmother, had died in February of the same year, making the first break in the family circle, which had been a singularly united one, the remainder all living to advanced years. Grief at the loss had been softened by the certainty that separation could not last long, and in spite of the terror with which her creed filled even the thought of death, suffering had made at last a welcome one. No other touch could bring healing or rest to the racked and weary body, and deeply as Simon Bradstreet mourned her loss, a weight rolled away, when the long suffering had ended.

That the country-side thronged to the funeral of the woman whose name was honored in every New England settlement, we may know, but no record remains of ceremony, or sermon, or even of burial place. The old graveyard at Andover holds no stone that may perhaps have been hers, and it is believed that her father's tomb at Roxbury may have received the remains, that possibly she herself desired should lie by those of her mother. Sermons were preached in all the principal churches, and funeral elegies, that dearest form of the Puritan muse, poured in, that by John Norton being the best illustration of manner and method.