" "Oh, no, He
hasn't," she answered; "cheer up! your turn will come soon."
She was always fond of music, especially of the one kind she had known
best; and the singing of hymns never failed to soothe her at the last;
therefore when the little group stood round her open grave on a lovely
July day and sang quite simply the hymns she loved, it seemed in its
simplicity and broken harmony a fitting farewell to the faded body she
had already left so far behind.
A great spirit has performed its mission and has been released. The
world moves on unconscious; but the world's children have been blessed
by her coming, and they who know and understand should praise God
reverently in her going. "As a teil tree, and as an oak, whose
substance is in them, when they cast their leaves: so the holy seed
shall be the substance thereof." In the words of the prophet we can
almost hear her glad cry:--
"My sword shall be bathed in heaven."
CELIA THAXTER. BORN JUNE, 1835; DIED AUGUST, 1894.
If it were ever intended that a desolate island in the deep sea should
be inhabited by one solitary family, then indeed Celia Thaxter was the
fitting daughter of such a house.
In her history of the group of islands, which she calls "Among the
Isles of Shoals," she portrays, in a prose which for beauty and wealth
of diction has few rivals, the unfolding of her own nature under
influences of sky and sea and solitude and untrammeled freedom, such
as have been almost unknown to civilized humanity in any age of the
world.
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