Page:The Ladies of the White House.djvu/85

Rh to feed on through all eternity, and she Is assisted from the room. How full of holy memories must that chamber of death have been to her as she summoned courage to turn and drink In the last look! The great fireside, with the smouldering embers dying into ashes gray, the quaint old mantel, all covered with vials and appendages of a sick apartment, their easy-chairs side by side, one deserted forever, and upon the bed lay the form of her friend and companion. It was wrong to let her stand there and suffer so, but her awe-stricken appearance paralyzes the stoutest heart, and they only stand and wait. A pale, haggard look succeeds the fierce intensity of her gaze, and she wraps her shawl about her and turns forever from all she in that hour lost. Another room receives her; another fire is built for her: and in the endless watches of that black night she mastered the longings of her heart, and never more crossed the threshold of that chamber of her loved and lost. A sickening feeling of utter loneliness and desolation ushered in the early morn of the first day of her widowhood, but her resolve was made; and when her loved ones saw It pained her, they urged no more that she should go back to the old apartment she had occupied all her married life.

"Congress resolved, that a marble monument be erected by the United States, In the Capitol at the city of Washington, and that the family of George Washington be requested to permit his body to be deposited under it, and that the monument be so designed as to