"
These were the last audible words uttered by Emma. When another morning
came it found her cold and silent, dressed for the grave. The spring
blossoms breathed their sweet fragrance into her open window, but Emma
was gone--gone to the land of unfading bloom; yet her life, short and
beautiful as the spring, had left in passing a more enduring fragrance
than that of early blossom and flower.
Little by little does the husbandman cast the precious seed into the
earth, and drop by drop comes the genial shower upon the green herb,
yet who does not despise the day of small things? Young, feeble
Christian, the world will never do thee justice, for in the great war
of mighty deeds thy meek, noiseless charity is unheard and forgotten;
but fear not, God keeps his own jewels. Do what thou canst, and thus
provide for thyself "a treasure in the heavens that faileth not."
There are some things spoken of in the town where Emma died, things not
wholly forgotten, but far back in the distance of years. It is said
that Mr. Graffam, who is now a Church-member and a town officer, was
once a complete sot, living in a log-hut upon the plain. So much for
the temperance reform. It is said, too, that the pious, charitable old
lady, Mrs. Lindsay, and her good daughter Martha, now living at
Appledale, were once very thoughtless, fashionable people; that the
gentle, amiable Mrs. Boyd was, when a girl and living with her
grandparents, one of the rudest and most reckless creatures living;
that Susan and Margaret Sliver, now earnest, efficient co-operaters in
every good cause, were once vain, frivolous, and almost hopelessly
sentimental.
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