^793] REV. WILLIAM SMITH, D. D. 373 



that I fear the consequences. The scene of her funeral and some pre- 

 ceding circumstances can never depart from my oind. 



On my return, with my wife, from a visit to our daughter — whom we had 

 been striving to console on the death of Mrs. Keppele — long familiar and 

 dear to both of us — my dear loving wife passing the gates of ChristChurch 

 Burying-ground, which stood daily open, led me through it to the graves of 

 the two children, and calling the old grave-digger, marked out a spot for 

 herself as close as possible to her children and the grave of Dr. Phineas 

 Bond, whose memory she adored. By the side of the spot we found 

 room and chose also one for me, as it was not permitted during the 

 sickness to open a grave once closed for the burial of another. We 

 therefore directed the grave-digger that this should be the order of our 

 interment, and pledged ourselves to each other that this order should 

 be observed by the survivor. But let me not be tedious to you. It 

 gives me some ease as my children are all absent, and cannot come near 

 me in town, to pour these circumstances into the bosom of a friend. 

 In melancholy mood we returned to our house. Night approached. I 

 hoped my dear wife had gone to rest, as she had chosen since her re- 

 turn from nursing her daughter through the fever to sleep in a chamber 

 by herself through fear of infection to her grandchild and me. But it 

 seems she closed not her eyes, sitting with them fixed through her 

 chamber window,* on Mrs. Keppele's house (who had died that day), 

 until about midnight, she saw her hearse and followed it with tearful 

 eyes as far as it would be seen. Two days afterwards, Mrs. Rogers, her 

 next and only surviving intimate friend, was carried past her window, 

 and by no persuasion could we draw her from thence, nor stop her 

 sympathetic foreboding tears, so long as her eyes could follow the 

 funeral, which was down Arch street, two squares from Fourth street, to 

 Second street, where, turning the corner to the Baptist Church, the 

 hearse disappeared. She threw herself on her bed and requested me, 

 who had stood by her side during the time of the funeral procession, to 

 leave her to her own reflections for a few minutes, and she would soon 

 be with me in my study, where I was writing letters to my friends and 

 family on business to the westward. She took her pen and assisted me 

 in copying some of them. It was Saturday; and we had persuaded our 

 daughter to set out for Norristown next day. My wife, though she in- 

 formed me on Saturday evening, that she was indisposed — and I am 

 persuaded was sure of the nature of her case — yet she charged me not 

 to inform her daughter, and sent me to hasten her out of town on Sun- 

 day morning, with an apology that she could not see her before she sat 

 out, finding it necessary to take a little physic for a slight indisposition, 



* Dr. Smith's house, to which he refers, was that fine old-fashioned one still stand- 

 ing at the southwest corner of Fourth and Arch, about one hundred feet below the 

 east side of the grave-yard of Christ Church, Philadelphia, 



