Page:Sketch of Connecticut, Forty Years Since.djvu/34

 herself to repose, in the attitude of a caterpiller, coiled upon a fresh verdant leaf.

On a small round table, lay the Scriptures and "Young's Night Thoughts," the favourite poem of Madam L. The latter was open at that canto, where the author so feelingly describes the loss of friends, and her spectacles laid therein, as if to preserve some striking passage for further perusal, while she indulged in those contemplations which it awakened. Her brow resting on her hand, displayed the emotions of a soul, whose strong susceptibility the influences of religion had tempered, purified, sublimated. Before her, past in review, the pictured scenes of childhood, the gaiety of youth, the sorrows of maturity, the loneliness of age. Memory awoke Grief from the slumber into which time had soothed her, and revived her long buried energies. The mourner seemed to see her mother, the soft nurse of her infancy, the watchful monitress of her childhood, again smitten by an unseen hand, and covered suddenly with the paleness of the tomb: one moment, bending over her plants, in the sweet recesses of her garden, the next, lying lifeless among them, blasted by Him who maketh all the "glory of man, as the flower of grass."

Her father, venerable for years, and high in publick honour, was again stretched before her, in the agonies of dissolving nature. Once more, his farewell tone faltered on her ear, as she wiped the dews from his, temples, "My daughter! visit the fatherless, and the widow in