The Lynden tribune. [volume] (Lynden, Wash.) 1908-current, 1920-09-16
IN MEMORIAM
Mrs, Henrietta Lauckhart

The following was read by
Mr.. f. Edison at the funeral services
for the late Mrs. Henrietta Lauck-
hart:
"Friends: The funeral rite is a
natural sacrament which has been o.
served in some form by all peoples.
And we are assembled here today in
accordance with an impulse as uni
yersal as the human race and as en-
during as love and sympathy, to per-
form the last earthly duty for her
who now lies in the stiffness of death
before us.
Borne on the eternal flow of time.
we are carried little while down its
, rapid current the longest life
mere breath, a dot-then we disap-
pear from the surface to be no long
err seen of men. AS entities we have
birth, as entities we die. Whence
we come or whittier we are going,
who can tell? We are placed here
without any will or volition of our
own by an alternating nature, which
will remove us by death without our
consent. For it is as natural to die
as it is to be born.
We live on an atom called Earth,
and what we know of the infinite Is
almost infinitely limited; but little
as we know, all have an equal right
to give their honest thought. Life
is shadowy, strange and winding
road on which we travel little way.
few short steps. just from the era
die, with it's lullaby of love, to the
! low and quiet way-side inn, where
all at last must sleep, and where the
only salutatiOn is. Good Night"
The withered leaf has fallen. Not
prematurely blasted, or roughly sew
cred from the living tree and the
companionship of it's kind, but in the
order of Nature, it has been gently
and peacefully returned to the earth
whence it came; its mission fulfilled,
its life work done. Mrs. Lauckhart
believed with all her heart in beauty,
in justice, in liberty, in the religion
of humanity, in telling the truth, in
keeping her word, in helping her
brother, and in living a clean life.
She would have said with Thomas
Paine: 1.-THE world is my country;
to do good is my religion"
+ She was kind, faithful, devoted
wife, and her home was always the
happiest and best ordered of house
holds. She was the kindest and most
self-sacrificing of mothers and no
better evidence of this could be found
than the testimony of her own chill
dren who know only too we'll what a
loss her departure is to them. She
was constant and courageous
friend, steadfast in prosperity and
adversely alike. She was generous
and obliging neighbor.
The sadness of the present Occas-
ion is, for the chief mourners here,
that of bereavement at the loss of
one who was near and dear to them
and whose place can never be filled:
while the old friends and neighbors
who have known her so many years
and who have come to say long
goodbye, are filled with a sorrow that
finds no word. The poet says, $50
live that when thy summons comes
to join the innumerable caravan
which moves to that mysterious
realm where each shall take his
chamber in the silent halls Of death,
Thou go not like the quarry slave at
night, Scourged to his dungeon; but
sustained and soothed by an unfal-
tering trust, approach thy grave like
one who wraps the drapery of his
couch about him, and lies down to
pleasant Dreams" Our sister to
whom we have come to pay our last
respects lived such life and now has
closed her eyes in pleasant dreams.