"My mother was an angel upon earth. She was a minister of blessing to all human beings within her sphere of action. Her heart was the abode of heavenly purity. She had no feelings but of kindness and benevolence; yet her mind was as firm as her temper was mild and gentle. She had known sorrow, but her sorrow was silent. She was acquainted with grief, but it was deposited in her own bosom. She was the real personification of female virtue, of piety, of charity, of ever active and never intermitting benevolence. O, God! could she have been spared yet a little while longer! My lot in life has been almost always cast at a distance from her. I have enjoyed but for short seasons and at long distant intervals the happiness of her society, yet she has been to me more than a mother. She has been a spirit from above, watching over me for good, and contributing by my mere consciousness of her existence to the comfort of my life. That consciousness is gone, and without her the world feels to me like a solitude.
"She was born on the 2d of November 1774, and had completed within less than a month of her 74th year. Had she lived to the age of patriarchs, every day of her life would have been filled with deeds of goodness and love. There is not a virtue that can abide in the female heart but it was the ornament of hers. She had been 54 years the delight of my father's heart, the sweetness of his toils, the comforter of all his sorrows, the sharer and heightener of his joys. It was but the last time when I saw my father when he told me, with an ejaculation of gratitude to the Giver of every good and perfect gift, that in all the vicissitudes of his fortunes, through all the good and evil report of the world, in all his struggles and all his sorrows, the affectionate participation and cheering encouragement of his wife had been his never-failing support, without which he was sure he should have never lived through them."
