Page:Robert Carter- his life and work. 1807-1889 (IA robertcarterhis00coch).pdf/264

248 affection for absent friends. Months afterward a friend across the water alluded to this incident as “an object lesson in the art of growing old gracefully.” So habitual was it for the old couple to need each other's presence at all times, to refer to each other, even to wait for each other in coming in to their meals, that the night after his wife had suddenly but gently passed into glory he went up-stairs when the family were summoned to tea, and came down again alone, saying sadly, “I almost forgot; I was going for your mother.”

Friends will mention concerning Robert Carter that he was for fifty years a member of the Foreign Mission Board; for nearly as many a director of the Bible Society; seventeen times a delegate to the General Assembly; for sixty-eight years an active member of the church, most of that time, indeed, a teacher, Sunday school superintendent, and elder in the church; but the mere statements do not carry the story of the deep religious life, and the steady good judgment in church matters, which was the reason for his occupying such positions. To “make sure he was right, and then go ahead,” was his habit. He was not afraid of responsibility, neither was he afraid of the hard work which justified his claim to be trusted with it. The same set of principles were in steady use in business, in church, and in home life. He never knew any antagonism between business and Christian living. His business success gave weight to his opinions in benevolent enterprises, and his connection with mission and Bible work gave character to his business; and if in his home life there was more of the affectionate and tender solicitude of the husband, the father, and the grandfather, he was still the same man that he was in the store,—alert, straight-forward, and kindly.

Most emphatically was he the “head of the family” up to the last year of his long life. Not often is a man of eighty-two looked up to for advice, depended upon for counsel by the whole family connection, as he was. The grandchildren, as they chose their life-work, or settled in homes