May 13th 1858

Henrietta May 1858 13th

I have been looking over what I have written in times gone by today, the first time for many months. Months which have brought joy and sorrow, joy for I have made many new acquaintances that I have learned to like. Some of them very much. Sorrow for in them I have lost two of my little nieces. Poor little Carrie and Lizzie. Do I wonder that I can but sit and look out of my chamber window and grow sad very very sad. Memory, fond memory loves to linger around those day’s when they sported in infancy glad and gay, and made the household glad and bright with their artless prattle and sunny laughter. It lingers around those dark dark day’s when we saw the rosy lifes grow pale, the lily upon the snowy? brow grow pailer and more heavenly beneath the sunny hair. We felt and knew that they must die. Oh those were dark dark days. We saw them place them in the little coffin. W---- their once buoyant forms in pure muslin and place the evergreen chaplet on their marble brows as if by their loved flowers we might call them back to life again. Then sadly we laid them to rest in the quite (quiet) graveyard. The winters snow falls lightly upon their pillow. The summers rain weeps over them But as we weep where we saw them resting in death embrace saw them lade in their final resting place The form we once so loved caresses us [no more] no many laughter ! No childish loving niece salutes us! Where rests the baby now? Cannot she hear us: Nay a niece? Oftentimes comes to us from the golden clouds at sunset and whispers softly “They have passed the dark waters of death. They have glided down its, blue, deep, waves in the swift canoe to the spirit land!” The firefly? Dances and the pale flower blossoms where once they sported They remain but the fair haired children who sported with them passed away! No longer they gather the spring flowers. But they have gone to another brighter better land! Where no sorrow comes! Where the flowers never fade. Where comes no slowing days or fitful winds sighing mournfully for faded joys. Where no tears ever flow. Where all is beautifull and bring and happy There, There! dweleth in joy those little ones you loved That once loved you would ye call them back  “Mourn not for the child from thy tenderness? Ere stain on its purity fell, To thy questioning heart Lo one answer from heaven Is it well with the child! It is well”