Page:Thoreau - As remembered by a young friend.djvu/48

 Still will I strive to be

As if thou wert with me;

Whatever path I take

It shall be, for thy sake,

Of gentle slope and wide

As thou wert by my side.

During the summer vacation of their school the brothers made together that happy voyage, since famous, on the Rivers, but it was not in their dreams how soon Death, coming suddenly and in strange form, was to sunder their earthly lives. John, in full tide of happy life, died in a few days of lock-jaw following a most trifling cut. The shock, the loss, and the sight of his brother's terrible suffering at the end, for a time overthrew Henry so utterly that a friend told me he sat still in the house, could do nothing, and his sisters led him out passive to try to help him.

Near the same time died suddenly a