Page:Poems of Nature and Life.djvu/154

 146 INTRODUCTION

where ; no apoplexy, the vessels were whole, but the top of the brain filled with congested blood ; so that the conclu- sion was that she had succeeded in sustaining herself just to the point where, for about ten feet width, the church steps are not covered with the baskets of a peddler. At this point, it had been seen that she was about to sit down, but instead thereof fell, striking the junction of the forehead with the root of the nose, into the hollow of which the edge of the stone fitted. Congestion was in- stantaneous, and I suppose one might fall a hundred thou- sand times without meeting with a blow in a part so well protected.

It is a little remarkable that not only did the death occur on soil once occupied by the mansion of her ances- tors, but that your letter just received nearly corresponds with the date of it, and that your father should have come with Willie to spend the night with us, arriving within half an hour of the news of her death and arrival of her body. He sat up with me all night, which was a great comfort to me, and gave me time to collect myself and summon that concentration of oneself which people call absence of mind, as well as that stupidity, like dreaming, which accompanies great and sudden shocks. The next day he spent in Roxbury, but on the night of it slept in the house with us.

Saturday night gave me time to put but one notice in the three evening papers, which, however, brought so great a number of friends that the two parlors could not well contain them ; and our cousin, Mrs. Adams, who received the Boston papers from cousin Henry Skinner after she had gone to bed and was asleep, arose at dawn, and, there being no railroad train (it being Sunday), rode twenty-five miles in her own carriage to attend the funeral. Most of

�� �