The
sweet infant lived but five days; "blushed into life and died." The day
before its death, the rite of the church, by which the little stranger into
this cold world was given to God, was performed. They called her by the
mother's name, and watched over her until she breathed her last breath upon
her mother's bosom, and then sunk the form into the cold waters of the
deep. As the corpse was lowered down over the side of the vessel, holy
voices sung the sweet and tender hymn,--
"So fades the lovely, blooming flower,
Frail, smiling solace of an hour;
So soon our transient comforts fly,
And pleasures only bloom to die."
Soon after the death of her babe, Mrs. Newell discovered symptoms of the
malady which soon carried her to an untimely grave. From the first, she had
no hope of recovery. Several of her friends had died of the same disease;
and when it fastened itself upon her system, she knew that her time had
come. The slow, wasting consumption was on her frame, and her days
were nearly run out. But the approach of death she viewed with perfect
composure. Though far from home, far from all the endeared scenes of youth,
from the roof which sheltered her in infancy, from the mother whose gentle
hand guided her up to womanhood, she was tranquil.
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