Bellows Falls times. [volume] (Bellows Falls, Vt.) 1856-1965, 1863-10-30
Alislellaneous Reaoine.
/" He Died Rich"

People said this every where, when the
morning papers announced the death of
John Russell, President of the - Bank.
They said it on Wall street, where they
count wealth by hundreds of thousands,
and they said it in elegant parlors, and by
luxuriant breakfast tables, all over the
squares and avenues in the great city they
said it too in dark alleys and squalid homes
where all his thousands could not buy back
to the millionaire one hour of the life that
was tothem burden and misery. Ev-
erywhsre it was the same story, " He died
! rich" rr
His family and his friends thought so as
they gathered around the bedside of the dy-
ing man; and you, reader, would have
thought so too, if you could have looked
around the chamber, into which death was
entering with his footballs and his ghastly
presence.
Oh, it was princely room. Rare pic
lures flushed the walls that winter day with
the glory of Arcadian summer the fairest
blossoms of Southern Mays were piled thick
upon the costly carpet; and the daintily
embroidered drapery fell in soft crinkled
clouds from the massive bedstead. And
the owner of all this magnifcence lay there
dying and through all his lif, of more
than threescore years he had toiled and
struggled for this--to die rich! He had
bought lands and sold them, he had sent
richly freighted ships TO foreign ports, he
had owned shares in railroads and stocks in
banks, and now!
All! there was an angel who stood at the
bedside of John Russell at that dying hour,
and the man had nothing out of all his life
TO give him; no generous, noble, self-sac-
rifcing deeds. which would have been pearls
and gold, and all precious jewels in the hand
OF the angel so he wrote down at the last
chapter of John Russell's life, +" He died
poor"
And John Russell saw the words as his
soul followed the angel on that journey
which sooner or later we must take. and he
knew then for the first time that all the la
Dor, and toll, and struggle for life on the
earth had only brought him this verdict at
the bar of The Kingdom of Heaven, He
died poor.'
g He died poor" A very few persons
said this of an old man who lay in back
chamber of a small, dilapidated building,
whose solitary window looked out on the
back garden of John Russell's residence
The floor was bare, and there were only a
few chairs, table and low bed in the
room. By its side stood an old black woman
whom the dying man had occasionally fur
nished with an armful of wood or loaf of
bread. She moistened his lips with water.
or held the tallow candle close TO his dim
eyes So that he might once more see the
lights of the world. He had not dollar
upon the earth; his fortune had taken wings
and flown away his wife and children had
gone before him his friends had deserted
or lost sight of him, but the grateful old
black woman whom he had saved from
starvation. ana
But the angel with the book stood there
too, and looking over the old mans life, he
saw row many good and gentle and genel-
Gus deeds frightened every year how he
b ad been kind to the suffering, and forgiven
such wrongs As make men fiends, and striv-
en- through all the trials and temptations of
his long. sad life, TO be true 10 God and him
self. So the angel wrote under the last
chapter of this mans life, and every letter
shone like some rare setting of diamonds,
L" He died rich"
( There was the house not made with hands,
with its columns of pearl and its ceilings of
jasper, with its pleasant rooms, and its lofty
halls, and IFS mighty organs, from which
peal forever the notes of praise to our God.
There too was the pleasant landscape,
with its green avenues, its golden paviIions,
its trees waving in the joy of eternal leaves
and its silver meadow lands sloping down
TO the river of eternal waters. He was
heir to all these things, for he had laid up
for himself crown Of glory in the king
dom. above, where moth and rust doth no,
corrupt