Page:Robert Carter- his life and work. 1807-1889 (IA robertcarterhis00coch).pdf/221

Rh in Patmos, with his thoughts filled with bright visions of the celestial country he was so soon to enter. Their communion was most sweet, and it was a very precious memory to Mr. Carter that at their last interview Dr. Muhlenberg drew him towards him for a farewell embrace and kiss.

On March 18, 1884, came the Golden Wedding of Mr. and Mrs. Carter. The family had been looking forward to it as a time of special rejoicing, though all the wedding days were regularly kept. On this there was to have been as great a jubilation as Mrs. Carter’s very feeble health would allow, but just the week before she was stricken down with a very dangerous illness, and almost passed through the gates of death. When the wedding day came, though convalescent, she was confined to her bed, and none were admitted to her room but her children, who assembled about her, offering their congratulations very quietly. It had been arranged that each one of the children and grandchildren should write them a congratulatory letter, and these letters were afterwards bound together in a book with Mr. and Mrs. Carter’s pictures. This was an entire surprise to the recipients, and gave them the greatest possible pleasure. The letter of the oldest son is here inserted as giving an idea of the volume.

“As I begin to write to congratulate you on the fiftieth return of your wedding anniversary, there come floating through my brain a host of texts from that volume, which, thanks to your training, has become the best loved and most studied of all books. I remember with gratitude how I used to sit beside mother in my eighth year reading the Bible, and asking her questions about its meaning, and how during that year I finished reading the good book through. Thus ‘from a child’ I have ‘known the Scriptures,’ because you taught