THE PLANT S LAST OFFICE. 21
husband, .-lie trill live again. She has been sicker than this once, when you were away. Yes, yes, she will breathe again." Long she continued, thus assuaging her bitter sorrow, with this vanity of trust, and then we tenderly strove to loosen her convulsive grasp from the lifeless idol. After we had prevailed, and it was borne from her sight, we still heard, in the pauses of the soothing voice with which her husband sought to console her, the wild cry, " She will breathe again ! I saw her sweet lips move, as they took her from me ! My baby will live again ! "
It was laid out on our sofa in the ladies cabin, in a pure white robe, its brow surpassingly beautiful, and the deeply fringed lids but imperfectly closed over its large lustrous eyes. The black lace veil of the mother shaded its form and features, and through it was clearly visible the last green slip of my rose-geranium. It was my gift to the dead, and pressed into that little pulseless hand, not without a tear. This was the last office of that cherished plant, which had left its own home, in the quiet gardens of New-England, to do this service for faded innocence, and itself to die. Happy shall we be, if in the closing of our frail life, we, like this trem bling voyager, leave behind a gleam of light and con solation, as the olive-leaf above the Hood, or the dove whose la.st act was peace, ere it entered rejoicing into the ark, to be a wanderer no more.
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