CHAPTER XVII.

–––––– AUGUSTA LARNED’S TRIBUTE.

The following tribute was written by Miss Augusta Larned, and published in the _Christian Register_ of July 28, 1892:

There is one master link in the family bond, as there is one keystone in the arch. Often we know not its binding power until it is taken away. Then the home begins to crumble and fall into confusion, and the distinct atoms, like beads from a broken string, roll off into distant corners. We turn our thoughts to one who made the ideal home, pervaded it, filled its every part like air and sunshine coming in at open windows, as unobtrusive as gentle. A spiritual attraction drew all to this centre. It was not what she said or did; it was what she was that inclined footsteps to her door. Those who once felt that subtle, penetrating sweetness felt they must return to bask in it again and again. So she never lost friends by a loss more pathetic than death. There were no dislocations in her life. All was even development and growth.

The good she did seemed to enter the pores of the spirit, and to uplift in unknown ways the poor degraded ideal of our lives. The secret of her help was not exuberance, but stillness and rest. Ever more and more the beautiful secret eluded analysis. It shone out of her eyes. It lingered in the lovely smile that irradiated her face, and made every touch and tone a benediction. Even the dullest perception must have seen that her life was spiritual, based on unselfishness and charity. Beside her thoughtfulness and tender care all other kinds of self-abnegation seemed poor. She lived in the higher range of being. The purity of her face and the clearness of her eyes was a rebuke to all low motives. But no word of criticism fell from her lips. She was ready to take into her all-embracing tenderness those whom others disliked and shunned. Her gentle nature found a thousand excuses for their faults. Life had been hard with them; and, for this reason, she must be lenient. The good in each soul was always present to her perceptions. She reverenced it even in its evil admixture as a manifestation of the divine.

She shunned the smallest witticism at another’s expense, lest she should pain or soil that pure inner mirror of conscience by an exaggeration. Perfect justice was the rule of her life. To the poor and despised she never condescended, but poured out her love and charity as the woman of Scripture broke the box of precious ointment to anoint the Master’s feet. All human beings received their due meed of appreciation at her hands. She disregarded the conventional limits a false social order has set up, shunning this one and honoring that one, because of externals. She was not afraid of losing her place in society by knowing the wrong people. She went her way with a strange unworldliness through all the prickly hedges, daring to be true to her own nature. She drew no arbitrary lines between human beings. It was the soul that interested her. The rich were not welcome for their riches, nor the poor for their poverty; but all were welcome for their humanity.

Her door was as the door of a shrine because the fair amenities were always found within. Hospitality to her was as sacred as the hearth altar to the ancients. If she had not money to give the mendicant, she gave that something infinitely better,—the touch of human kinship. Many came for the dole she had to bestow, the secret charity that was not taken from her superfluity, but from her need. Her lowliness of heart was like that of a little child. How could a stranger suspect that she was a deep and profound student? Her researches had led her to the largest, most liberal faith in God and the soul and the spirit of Christ incarnate in humanity. The study of nature, to which she was devoted, showed her no irreconcilable break between science and religion. She could follow the boldest flights of the speculative spirit or face the last analysis of the physicist, while she clung to God and the witness of her own being. She aimed at an all-round culture, that one part of her nature might not be dwarfed by over-balance and disproportion.

But it was the high thinking that went on with the daily doing of common duties that made her life so exceptional. A scholar in the higher realms of knowledge, a thinker, a seeker after truth, but, above all, the mother, the wife, the bread-giver to the household. It was a great privilege to know this woman who aped not others’ fashions, who had better and higher laws to govern her life, who admitted no low motive in her daily walk, who made about her, as by a magician’s wand, a sacred circle, free from all gossip, envy, strife, and pettiness, who kept all bonds intact by constancy and undimmed affection, and has left a memory so sacred few can find words to express what she was to her friends.

* * * * *

But love and self-forgetfulness and tender service wear out the silver cord. It was fretted away silently, without complaint, the face growing ever more seraphic, at moments almost transparent with the shining of an inner light. One trembled to look on that spiritual beauty. Surely, the light of a near heaven was there. Silently, without complaint or murmur, she was preparing for the great change. Far-away thoughts lay mirrored in her clear, shining eyes. She had seen upon the mount the pattern of another life. Still no outward change in duty-doing, in tender care for others. Then one day she lay down and fell asleep like a little child on its mother’s breast, with the inscrutable smile on her lips. She who had been “mothering” everybody all her life long was at last gathered gently and painlessly into the Everlasting Arms.

EPILOGUE.

An amber Adirondack river flows Down through the hills to blue Ontario; Along its banks the staunch rock-maple grows, And fields of wheat beneath the drifted snow. The summer sun, as if to quench his flame, Dips in the lake, and sinking disappears. Such was the land from which my mother came To college, questioning the future years; And through the Northern winter’s bitter gloom, Gilding the pane, her lamp of knowledge burned. The bride of Science she; and he the groom She wed; and they together loved and learned. And like Orion, hunting down the stars, He found and gave to her the moons of Mars.

● Transcriber’s Notes: ○ Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected. ○ Typographical errors were silently corrected. ○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only when a predominant form was found in this book. ○ Text that was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).