“When he was three years and six months old, his mother and I were driving with him along a beautiful road in the country. We passed through a charming valley where the green hills bathed by the afternoon sun closed upon us. We gazed in silence. A sweet voice uttered the words:
‘As round about Jerusalem
The mountains stand alway,
The Lord his folk doth compass so
From henceforth aud for aye.’
This verse from a Psalm which he had committed to memory he applied to the scene before us. His mother asked him what he was saying, and again he repeated the verse, waving his hand to the hills about us.
“There was a spring in the side of a hill near to our country home around which there was a rustic seat. The dear boy was seated by me while I was reading one day, and, running up to me, he took me by the chin and said, ‘Papa, will this spring flow in this way when you and I are dead?’ I replied, ‘Yes.’ ‘Our spirits will be in heaven then, won’t they?’
“I little thought that in a few months that spring would cease to flow,—some excavations having interfered with it,—and that before another year had come to us that dear boy should be with our Father in heaven. His death after a few months was the first and sorest trial of my life. In my father’s family of eleven and my wife’s family of ten there had been no death for forty years. We had seen death around us, but our families had remained unbroken. At the funeral my father-in-law rode in the carriage with me, and the coffin of my dear boy lay before us. He uncovered the glass and looked at the sweet face, and with streaming eyes said, ‘Who will be the next?’ ”
