Scotland/Scots > Reminiscences of a Highland parish

PASSING AWAY.
I 2 I
The widow did not long survive her husband.
She had, with the quiet strength and wisdom of
love, nobly fulfilled her part as wife and mother.
And who can know what service a wife and mother
is to a family, save those who have had this staff
to lean on, this pillow to rest on, this sun to shine
on them, this best of friends to accompany them,
until their earthly journey is over, or far advanced ?
Her last years were spent in peace in the old
manse, occupied then and now by her youngest
son. But she desired, ere she died, to see her
first-born in his Lowland manse far away, and with
him and his children to connect the present with
the past. She accomplished her wishes, and left
an impress on the young of the third generation
which they have never lost during the thirty years
that have passed since they saw her face and heard
her voice. Illness she had hardly ever known.
One morning a grandchild gently opened her bed¬
room door with breakfast. But hearing the low
accents of prayer, she quietly closed it again, and
retired. When she came again, and tapped and
entered, all was still. The good woman seemed
asleep in peace ; and so she was, but it was the