Page:Poems of Nature and Life.djvu/223

 THE RANDALL FAMILY 21$

Dr. Randall and his brother Eli, and of Maria, are on the walls. At 4:15, we were driven again to South Acton, and came back to Boston."

Beside all these public and private benefactions, Miss Randall took the utmost pains, in her will of June 10, 1892, to provide generously for each and every relative, however distant. With no brother, no sister, no nephew, no niece, and, I believe, with only one first cousin surviving, she gave or bequeathed some $300,000 to over a score of remoter connections, besides remembering many personal friends and leaving a handsome remainder to her residuary legatee.

Patiently and indefatigably she had given herself for more than two years to the most tiresome details of all this weary business, so utterly alien to her tastes and habits of life and so painful to her sad heart, under the sagacious direction and with the sympathetic help of Mr. Balch. How she dreaded and shrank from a duty which she yet felt to be a most sacred one, and how heroically she did it, — how, her duty done and her strength ex- hausted, she broke down completely in August, 1894, living nearly three years longer in secluded suffering, yet tended by two faithful nurses who soon came to feel for her the attachment of devoted daughters, — none knew this at the time except Mr. Balch and the little knot of friends who did for her the little that could be done by reverence and love. But countless lives for many genera- tions to come, unconscious what they owe to this wonder of gentle and saintly womanhood, will be made brighter, happier, and more fruitful because Belinda Lull Randall, conceiving herself in all humility to be merely her brother's agent, so well read his heart and obeyed his benevolent spirit and did his unfinished work in deeds of light.

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