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 



