How full of miseries and sorrows is this fitful life! Scene after scene of distress is our earthly portion. Our deepest sympathies have been called forth by a note just received from our Junior associate, now in Alabama. Last year he was deprived of an only child, a son, by death. Some two or three months since, sister Graves was called home, to Ohio, to visit a dying brother. There a daughter was born, and soon after came the following message:

Obit - Lua Ellen Graves

      In Kingsville, Ohio, LUA ELLEN, infant daughter of Rev. J. R. and L. E. Graves. Will the absent father and brother accept the following lines upon the burial of his infant daughter, in the village grave yard of its mother's native place!

We lowered the Babe to its peaceful rest,
      With a sunset sky o'er head,
While the murmuring boughs of the churchyard trees
      Were the requiem for the dead.

No Mother came with a tearful eye
      To the grave of her spirit child -
No Father stood with a heaving chest.
      As the turf o'er its breast was piled.

Not a name on the coffin lid was traced,
      Of the beautiful at rest.
That came, and went, like a summer cloud
      In the rosy tinted West.

The early dead in their innocence
      Give the heart no cause to weep,
Like a cherub bright, in its robes of light,
      We laid it down to sleep.

An angel's smile was on its lip.
      And an angel's meed was given;
Too pure for earth, like the dew drop bright,
      'Twas returned to its native Heaven.

ADA.

Kingsville, May 2, 1847.
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      We learn that bro. Graves' mother is confined to her bed, that Dr. Spencer, his wife's father, is almost beyond hope, and that sister Graves is not expected to survive. In regard to them he thus writes us: -

      "When the sick, and, as all thought, dying old father, was waiting, day after day, for the time to come when he might clasp his long absent, darling daughter to his bosom, they brought him only her youngest born, sleeping cold in death. And from her native village the mourning train wound slowly forth, without Father or Mother, to lay it in its last resting place. And while I now write, that fond Mother, that affectionate wife, that young and lovely companion, that brightest star that ever smiled on my earthly pathway, may be (O God, thou knowest) sleeping beside our cherub babe, in the quiet grave yard of her native village."

      May the Lord sustain our dear brother in this dark hour. H.

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[From R. B. C. Howell & J. R. Graves, editors, Tennessee Baptist, Nashville, May 29, 1847, p. 2. Scanned and formatted by Jim Duvall.]

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