Page:Frances Wood Shimer 1826-1901.djvu/26

 speech became genial social conversation. Her helplessness made her more thoughtful for others, and augmented her desire to make every one around her happy. She was her old self, bright, interested, and interesting, but softened by life's experiences. From her chair she wrote: “I have become such a shirk, but I do not think I am leading an idle life altogether, you have no idea how busy I am and how the days fly by; I cannot accomplish one-third I want to day by day.” “It seems strange that my life should be always so full of work, and yet what I have accomplished so far short of what I had planned.” “I have made and enjoyed more acquaintances in this 'shut-in' period than I would have done in fifty years of my old manner of living.” “I have time to read, a luxury I have been so long time denied.”

The fourth day preceding her death she was unusually bright and cheerful. At dinner her geniality, her conversation, her bright repartee, surprised her companions. As twilight approached she appeared weary, and proposed retiring early. She did not fall asleep at once, but her mind wandered. She talked in a low voice to herself without completed sentences, and her smile indicated that her thoughts were of a pleasing nature. When she slept, it was a long slumber of two days and three nights, ending Sunday morning, November 10, 1901, at quarter before six o'clock, when she wakened in another world. The night was past, the day had come; at last there was “time to rest.”

Her will provides for personal bequests&mdash;among others to Mrs. Hazzen and Miss Joy, the former twenty-seven and the latter twenty-four years actively connected with the school, as evidence of her remembrance of their long service and valuable assistance. The residue of her estate constitutes a perpetual endowment for the Academy, being held in trust by her executors. Her interest in self-supporting girls is reaffirmed by the request that leniency shall be shown to those yet in arrears for school expenses, but she does not impair their self-respect by canceling debts of honor.

Dr. Shimer died in 1895, leaving his estate by devise to her for educational purposes. She followed his desires in the distribution of his personal bequests; but the remainder, which becomes a part of the endowment of the Academy, was lessened by the litigation