Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 5.djvu/410

 400 PETER H. BURNETT. She was a small, delicate woman, with a sweet musical voice and an eloquent tongue. We buried him among the stately pines, in the open woods, where the winds might murmur a solemn and lonely requiem to his memory. All the people of the camp left their work and attended the burial ; and I never witnessed a more, sorrowful scene. There were no tearless eyes in the assemblage. No clergyman was present, but at the lonely grave of her husband Mrs. Ray made an im- promptu address, which affected me so much that I soon wrote out its substance, preserving her own expressions so far as I could remember them. The following is a copy of what I then wrote: O David ! thou art cold and lifeless. Litfle dost thou know the sor- rows thy poor and friendless and sickly wife now suffers. Thou art gone from me and from our children forever. Thou wert ever kind to me ; you loved me from my girlhood. O friends ! he was a man without reproach, beloved by all who knew him. He was a just man, honest in all his dealings. He did unto others as he wished they should do unto him. He defrauded no one. He was a pious and steady man; a profane oath had never escaped his lips, even from a boy; he was never found at the grog shop or the gambling table. He it was who lifted the prayerful hands. His creed was peace. He died in his right mind, with a conscience void of reproach, and committed his children to my charge. The only thing that wounded his conscience was .the reflection that, on the road from Indiana to this country, he was compelled to do things that grieved his righteous soul he was compelled to labor on the Sabbath day. But he is gone to a bet- ter world, where his weary spirit will be at rest. Oh, if he had only died in a Christian land ! But the thought of his being buried in this lonely and wicked place ! He has left me alone in a land of strangers, a poor, sickly, weakly woman. Who shall now read to me from the Bible, and wait upon me in my sickness ? For months and years he waited upon his sickly wife without a murmur. He was ever a tender husband to me, but he has gone and left me. Who is here to sympa- thize with me ? Ah, me, what shall I do ? While in the mines I became acquainted with John C. McPherson, a young, genial spirit from old Scotland. He was a generous soul, and cared little for wealth. On