Page:Sketch of Connecticut, Forty Years Since.djvu/25

 and tried every nerve, yet, if he might but lay his head upon his mother's bosom, he would endure without repining. Tears quivered in his soft, blue eyes, like dew in the bell of the hyacinth, if she were no longer visible. Yet, when in a moment she returned, a smile of the spirit would beam through, and rule the convulsions of physical agony. "My son," said his father, "let us be willing that you should go to your Saviour, and to your brother in heaven."

But the suffering child, who could imagine no heaven brighter than the indulgence of his own young affections, sighed incessantly as death approached. Yet his convulsed brow resumed partial tranquillity, when his mother's voice poured forth, in trembling, agonizing harmony, the sacred music of the hymn he loved. It was then that he breathed away his spirit, fancying that angels hastened him to rise, and learn their celestial melodies. But, ere his heart ceased to throb, the destroyer had laid his hand upon the youngest, "the beautiful, the brave." Unconsciousness miserably changed a countenance, which was ever lighted by the glow of intelligence, or the gladness of mirth. Unbroken sleep seemed settling without resistance upon him, who had never been willing even for a moment to be at rest. Yet nature on the eve of dissolution aroused to an afflicting contest with her conqueror. Cries and struggles were long and violent, and now and then a reproachful glance would be bent upon his parents, as if the victim wondered they should lend no aid to his conflict.