Page:The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur).djvu/455

Rh performed with deliberation and consideration for the earnest desire of each one present to gaze upon the features of the departed Leader.

Sunshine filtered through the partly drawn white shades and rose-colored draperies of the drawing-room, especially in the southeast corner of the second drawing-room where in the bay-window on a catafalque stood the bronze casket, a sheaf of pink roses across its foot. Enshrined therein was a pallid, waxen figure, like a perfect model or masque of life, the gray hair brushed from the white brow whereon seemed written in memorable expressiveness the word “Principle.” The figure was clothed in a simple white silk gown over which was wrapped a shawl of white lace, stretching from throat to feet, as though loving hands had wound this mortal clay with yards of filmy, fine-spun fabric as a last tribute of tenderness.

When all had passed in slow defile, the bearers closed the casket and lifted it to their shoulders. They bore it out through the wide hall, walking after a group of distinguished men who had been especially singled out for the honorary escort. These loving students, some elderly and white-haired, some in the full prime of stalwart manhood, walked proudly with their burden, tears unheeded bathing their faces. At the sight of these men escorting the bearers, a white-haired jurist, a former governor of the Commonwealth, one of the foremost journalists of the United States, and of these gifted men of the Church from London, New York, Chicago, with that body lifted high among them,