Page:Sketch of Connecticut, Forty Years Since.djvu/26

 Cold, big drops started thick upon his temples, and his golden hair streamed with the dews of pain. It was a fearful sight to see a child so struggle with the king of terrors. At length with one long sob he yielded, and moaning sank to rest.

The little white monument still marks the couch of the three brothers. Its silence is eloquent on the uncertainty of the hopes of man—on the bitterness that tinges the brightest fountains of his joy.

Such were the adversities to which the heart of Madam L had been subjected. Her blossoms had been riven from her, as a fig-tree shaketh its untimely figs before the blast. An affecting memorial of her feelings, at this period, is still preserved, where, in a poetical form, she pours out her sorrows before Him who had afflicted her, and urges with the most afflicting earnestness, that her spirit may not lose the benefits of his discipline. After the calmness of resignation had soothed the tumult of woe, she seldom spoke of her griefs. She kept them sacred for the communication of her soul with its Maker. Yet they diffused over her cheerful and faithful discharge of duty, a softness, a sympathy with those who mourned, a serene detachment of confidence from terrestrial things, which realized the tender description of a recent, moral poet: