Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 19.djvu/370

 352 REVEREND EZRA FISHER mined pace till the terrible King- removed her from all her earthly relations on Friday, the 20th of January, at five min- utes past eleven A. M. I do not design to write her obituary now, if ever. She has made her own impression in the silent sphere where the retiring pioneer missionary's wife is always mostly needed. The most important sphere of her Christian usefulness was at home, aiding and ever encouraging her hus- band in his labors, when his field lay far from home, which occasioned weeks and sometimes months of separation, cheer- fully assuming the family responsibilities, with no complaints and few intimations that ours was a mission of privations and trials unknown to pastors' families in the older churches. Here she always saw that the incense was daily burning on the family altar, so that for almost twenty-four years there has not to my recollection been a day in which the morning and evening prayer had not been offered in my family, our pro- tracted journeys not excepted. As an illustration of her influ- ence in this respect in the family, the night after we deposited her remains in the grave, my little son, to whom I have alluded, after we retired to our lonely lodging, asked me, "Who will pray in the family now when you are gone?" Next to her family, she was ever found taking along with her the entire family to the house of God as often as the Sabbath returned. Thither she repaired as much to honour God in His institutions as to be delighted with an eloquent discourse. The Sabbath school has ever been a sphere of Christian action in which she seemed at home and she has never, except at short intervals, from ill health or causes beyond her control, left her seat as a teacher vacant. I need not state to you, dear brother, that she ever took a deep interest in all the meetings of the church, especially the covenant meetings. The women's prayer-meeting found in her a warm advocate and personal supporter. Although she ever delighted to learn of the progress of missions, both at home and abroad, yet her mind seemed peculiarly formed to exert a maternal influence. The proper education of her own family, in the most general sense of the term, as well as that of the rising generation around her, occupied a large place in her thoughts