DEATH OF MRS. SILLIMAN. 93 



The latter part of this year was clouded by the 

 apprehension of a great affliction. The illness of 

 Mrs. Silliman is alluded to in the Diary in the fol- 

 lowing notice of the death of one of her friends : 



Mrs. Olivia Day, wife of the Rev. President Day, died on 

 Friday noon, January 11, 1850. She took to her bed on 

 New Year's day, with a hard cold, which became first a 

 catarrhal, then a congestive, and finally a typhus fever. 

 On the day on which she took to her bed, she wept (as 



Miss T who was with her informed me) because she 



could not come to visit Mrs. Silliman as she wished to do, 

 and to watch with her ; but she was called away first, and 

 with a very short warning, while her friend still lingers 

 on the boundary line between the two worlds. My ven- 

 erable friend, President Day, now far on in the evening of 

 life, is thus deprived of the companion of thirty-eight years ; 

 but he is a heavenly-minded man, and receives the bereave- 

 ment with a most Christian spirit ; and he enjoys the alle- 

 viation of domestic society. His two daughters, with the 

 husband of one of them, and an interesting grandchild, 

 make his house still a home while he lingers in this world, 

 and he has a better inheritance in store in the world which 

 is to come. 



On the 18th of January, Mrs. Silliman died. Her 



, illness had been long and distressing. The Diary, 



for several months after this event, is taken up with 



tender recollections of her life. In beginning a new 



volume, he adverts to the same theme : 



March 3d. The preceding number of this private 

 Journal closed with the death of my dearly beloved wife, 

 and many pages were devoted to her memory ; to an analysis 

 of her character ; to our mutual history of the events which 

 led to our marriage, and to extracts from numerous letters 



