And
yet, on reaching home, he found her dead! The body is to be conveyed to
America, and the funeral service was read over her in her house, only a
few neighbors and friends being present. We were shown into a darkened
room, where there was a dim gaslight burning, and a fire glimmering, and
here and there a streak of sunshine struggling through the drawn
curtains. Mr. G------ looked pale, and quite overcome with grief,--this,
I suppose, being his first sorrow,--and he has a young baby on his hands,
and no doubt, feels altogether forlorn in this foreign land. The
clergyman entered in his canonicals, and we walked in a little procession
into another room, where the coffin was placed.
Mr. G------ sat down and rested his head on the coffin: the clergyman
read the service; then knelt down, as did most of the company, and prayed
with great propriety of manner, but with no earnestness,--and we
separated.
Mr. G------ is a small, smooth, and pretty young man, not emphasized in
any way; but grief threw its awfulness about him to-day in a degree which
I should not have expected.
January 20th.--Mr. Steele, a gentleman of Rock Ferry, showed me this
morning a pencil-case formerly belonging to Dr. Johnson. It is six or
seven inches long, of large calibre, and very clumsily manufactured of
iron, perhaps plated in its better days, but now quite bare. Indeed, it
looks as rough as an article of kitchen furniture.
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