place of hostess in Government House — he looks across the festive table at her place, and 'thanks the God, Who had bereaved him of his wife, for having blessed him with the daughter,' — still, after fourteen years, lamenting the bereavement. She has in January, 1853, joined his camp with all its imposing circumstances on the Ganges bank, radiant with hopes that were, after nine short months, to be dashed and shivered.
On May 4, 1853, he is forty-nine years old. Writing to Montgomery, he alludes in cheerful strain to 'entering the Jubilee year of one's life. How must the retrospect humble one, and the prospect stir one up to greater diligence and devotion to God's service.' He adds, 'By this time next year I may have all my five children around me in India.' Of the seven, the 'little flock 'spoken of by the mother, two had died, three were in India, one (Charles) was in England, and one was coming out[1]. So he hoped that at length, fifteen years after his irreparable loss, the family circle, though bereft of its graceful head, would yet be re-united. But this happiness was not to be vouchsafed to him.
During the summer of this year the heat was intense and the rainfall late in coming. As the season wore
- ↑ This one was William, who landed at Calcutta later in the year, only to learn that the father he had come to meet was dead. He subsequently entered into Holy Orders in England, held a parish in Lincolnshire, and died in 1870. Some of his sermons are extant, suited indeed to a rural congregation, but breathing the spirit and informed with the style of his grandfather Thomas Thomason.
