believe you can. I write this with this feeling: I think that I could help another in my condition if they had not placed their intelligence in matter. This I have not done, and yet I am slowly failing. Won't you write me if you will undertake for me if I can get to you?
Respectfully,Mary M. Patterson.
The verses referred to had already been published in a Lynn newspaper.
Lines on the Death of Dr. P. P. Quimby,[1] Who Healed with the Truth that Christ Taught in Contradistinction to All Isms.
Did sackcloth clothe the sun and day grow night,
All matter mourn the hour with dewy eyes,
When Truth, receding from our mortal sight,
Had paid to error her last sacrifice?
Can we forget the power that gave us life?
Shall we forget the wisdom of its way?
Then ask me not amid this mortal strife—
This keenest pang of animated clay—
To mourn him less; to mourn him more were just
If to his memory 'twere a tribute given
For every solemn, sacred, earnest trust
Delivered to us ere he rose to heaven.
Heaven but the happiness of that calm soul,
Growing in stature to the throne of God;
Rest should reward him who hath made us whole,
Seeking, though tremblers, where his footsteps trod.
Mary M. Patterson.
Lynn, January 22, 1866.
- ↑ In a copy of these verses sent to Mrs. Sarah G. Crosby the title is worded somewhat differently and several slight variations occur in the text.
