The Ashland union. [volume] (Ashland, Ashland County, Ohio) 1854-1868, 1859-03-09

out in sobs. He hurried to the door to spare
her the terrible reproof of the grief that had
now mastered him. When he passed her, she
turned toward him with a faint cry.
He caught her as she sank forward, and saved
her from dropping on the floor. For the last
time his arms closed round her. For the last
time, his lips touched hers-cold and insensi-
BILE to him now. He laid her on the sofa, and
then went out.
One of the female servants was crossing the
hall. The girl started as she met him, and
turned pale at the sight of his face. He could
not speak to her, but he pointed to the study
door. He saw her go into the room, and then
he left the house.
He never. entered it more, and he and his
wife never met again.
Later ON that last day, a sister of Mr.. Car
ling's-a married woman living in the town
came to the rectory, weeping bitterly. She
brought an open note with her addressed to
unhappy mistress of the house. It contained
these few lines, blotted and stained with tears
"May God grant us both the time for repent
ance. If l had loved you less, l might have
trusted myself to see you again. Forgive me,
and pity me, and remember me in your pray
ers, as l shall forgive and pity and remember
you"
He had tried to write more, but the pen had
dropped from his hand. His sisters entreat-
les had not moved him.. After giving her the
note to deliver, he had ~solemnly charged her
to be gentle in communicating the tidings that
she bore and had departed alone for London.
He heard all circumstances with patience
He did not deny that the one deception of
which his wife had been guilty Subsequent in
quiry proved that she had deceived him in
nothing else, and that her first husband had
died little more than six months after her di-
vorce) was the most pardonable of all conceal
ment of the truth, because it sprang from her
love for him. But he had the same hopeless
answer for every one who tried to plead with
him, the verse from the Gospel of St. Luke.
His purpose in travelling to London was to
make the necessary arrangements for his wlfe,s
future existence, and then to get employment
which would separate him from his home, and
from all its associations. A missionary expe
dition to one of the Pacific Islands, accepted
him as a volunteer. Broken in body and spirit,
his last look at England, from the deck of the
ship, was his last look at land. A fortnight
afterward his brethren read the burial service
over him on a calm, cloudless evening at sea.
Before he was committed to the deep, his little
pocket bible, which had been a present from
his wife, was, in accordance with his dying
wishes, placed open on his breast, SO that the
inscription, "To my dear husband, might rest
over his heart.
l need say but little more. You have seen
and spoken to the poor creature who was once
his wife. When she was frst placed under my
care, I thought her case hopeless. The mental
malady, after she had been with me little more
than a month, was complicated by physicalmal-
ady-by fever on the brain. To my surprise,
and to thesurprise of my professional brethren,
whom L called in to help me, she lived through
it, and she, recovered, with the complete loss of
one faculty, which, in her situation, oorthing,
is a mercy and a gain to her-Is mean the ut
ter loss of memory. She has not the %faintest
CLEAN of recollection of anything that hap
pened before her illness; and in that happy OBJ
livion she lives contentedly the life of a child.
The veriest trifes are as new and as interesting
to her as they are to your young children or to
mine. So far as any necessity for restraint is
concerned, she might leave my care tomorrow.
But her friends know that my wife has grown
to love her, as well as to pity her and that my
children would feel it to be a cruel loss if their
poor grown playmate was taken away from them.
1 hope she will be left to live in their society,
and die with nothing on her memory but the
recollection of their kindness.