Page:Sketches of representative women of New England.djvu/98

Rh work, unconscious of the spiritual beauty which invested her daily life&mdash;whether in her kitchen, in the heat and overcrowding incident to the issues of a large special diet list, or sitting at the cot of some poor lonely soldier, whispering of the higher realities of another world&mdash;she was always the same presence of grace and love, of peace and benediction.

"I have been with her in the wards where the men have craved some simple religious service&mdash;the reading of Scripture, the repetition of a psalm, the singing of a hymn, or the offering of a prayer&mdash;and invariably the men were melted to tears by the touching simplicity of her eloquence."

In June, 1865, she was performing service in a hospital at Richmond, Va., and subsequently she worked with the same earnestness in schools for white and colored people in that city.

Returning to Massachusetts broken in health, she spent some time in a sanitarium. She was married October 11, 1866, to Hamilton Osgood. She died in Newton, Mass., April 20, 1868. The commemorative services, held in the Universalist Church in Chelsea on Sunday, April 26, were interesting and impressive, and attended by many friends, including soldiers and other army associates. Dr. Leonard, in his sermon from the text, "She hath done what she could," spoke of her beautiful life as complete in three stages&mdash;preparation, work, rest. Two hymns&mdash;"Nearer, my God, to Thee," and "Rest for the Weary"&mdash;were hymns that had been favorites with Miss Gilson: she had often sung them in the hospitals.

Among the appreciative words called forth by her passing were these, dated May 13, 1868, written by the Rev. Clay MacCauley, who had been an army chaplain. They are here copied from the Christian Register: "How well I remember her! We first met in Pleasant Valley, Md., October, 1862, soon after the battle of Antietam. She was then giving the wealth of her mind and heart to the sick and wounded soldiers in an old, cheerless log barn we tried to call a hospital. What a beautiful minister of goodness she was! There on that hard threshing-floor she could be seen constantly, often sitting beside the sick, speaking those words of comfort, smiling those sisterly smiles, reading those 'words of life,' singing those songs of home, country, and heaven, which gave to her the name, 'Sweet Miss Gilson.' We all loved her. I am sure she made home dearer, life purer, and heaven nearer to every one of us. When, as it happened so often, some spirit was about to be released from its bonds, she always took a place beside the dying one and received the farewell messages. Then, with her pale, uplifted face, always beautiful, but never so beautiful as when it lay back looking into the world to which she has herself now gone, she bore the departing soul by the power of faith to its rest. They were no false tears she shed. They were no false words she spoke. Never seemed touch more gentle than hers. Never seemed step so light. It was brightness at her coming and sadness at her going.

"She was brave as she was loving. I have seen her sit unmoved and silent in the midst of a severe cannonade while soldiers were fleeing for refuge. I have seen her almost alone in a contraband camp and hospital. In the midst of ignorance ill-suited to her, vice that must have been repugnant, and squalor in all its repulsiveness, she moved, an angel of mercy, loving and loved. She gave, in all her ministrations, health to the diseased, comfort, inspiration to the dying, strength to the timid, knowledge to the ignorant, and to the depraved the beauty of purity. Her earthly life seemed but a type of the heavenly."

The author of the following heartfelt tribute, dated April 22, 1868, here quoted but in part, wrote from the privileged standpoint of long and intimate acquaintance.

"To the memory of one whose years, measured by the sands of time, were few, not so when reckoned by the value of the loyal and royal service she performed.

"The writer knew her well, in the home, in society, and in the more trying experiences of the army hospital and the field; and in each position and in each relation he felt her goodness of heart and her greatness of soul. He loved her for what she has been to those near and dear to him, for what she has done for