Page:Salem - a tale of the seventeenth century (IA taleseventeenth00derbrich).pdf/308

 "There is a tear for all who die, a mourner o'er the humblest grave;"—for death is always death; no lavished words, no mitigating circumstances can make it any thing less—but do we never think how aggravating circumstances may make it more?

We weep when we stand by the death-*bed of our beloved ones, and watch the fading eye, and fondly clasp the nerveless hand; they may have been spared to us even to the utmost limitation of human life, and yet our affections can not let them go. Death comes to them, as our hearts know and our lips acknowledge, from the hand of a loving Father, sent perhaps as a welcome release from tears and pains, from weakness and infirmity—but yet it is death, and our hearts rebel against it. We may have been permitted to watch over them in loving tenderness; we have surrounded them with all that love or skill or science could devise for their relief; we have walked with them hand in hand, and smoothed and cheered their path through "the dark valley," and yet, "when the long parting summons them away," it is death—still death; and our