“I wrote you yesterday that she was convalescent.  So she then appeared and so the doctor pronounced.  She was up about five o’clock yesterday P.M. to have her bed made as usual; was unusually cheerful and social; spoke of the pleasure of being with her dear husband in New York ere long; stepped into bed herself, fell back with a momentary struggle on her pillow, her eyes were immediately fixed, the paleness of death overspread her countenance, and in five minutes more, without the slightest motion, her mortal life terminated.

“It happened that just at this moment I was entering her chamber door with Charles in my arms, to pay her my usual visit and to pray with her.  The nurse met me affrighted, calling for help.  Your mother, the family, our neighbors, full of the tenderest sympathy and kindness, and the doctors thronged the house in a few minutes.  Everything was done that could be done to save her life, but her ‘appointed time’ had come, and no earthly power or skill could stay the hand of death.

“It was the Lord who gave her to you, the chiefest of all your earthly blessings, and it is He that has taken her away, and may you be enabled, my son, from the heart to say:  ’Blessed be the name of the Lord.’...  The shock to the whole family is far beyond, in point of severity, that of any we have ever before felt, but we are becoming composed, we hope on grounds which will prove solid and lasting.

“I expect this will reach you on Saturday, the day after the one we have appointed for the funeral, when you will have been in Washington a week and I hope will have made such progress in your business as that you will soon be able to return....

“You need not hurry home.  Nothing here requires it.  We are all well and everything will be taken good care of.  Give yourself no concern on that account.  Finish your business as well as you will be able to do it after receiving this sad news.”

This blow was an overwhelming one.  He could not, of course, compose himself sufficiently to continue his work on the portrait of Lafayette, and, having apprised the General of the reason for this, he received from the following sympathetic letter:—­

I have feared to intrude upon you, my dear sir, but want to tell you how deeply I sympathize in your grief—­a grief of which nobody can better than me appreciate the cruel feelings.

You will hear from me, as soon as I find myself again near you, to finish the work you have so well begun.

Accept my affectionate and mournful sentiment.

LAFAYETTE.

The day after he received his father’s letter he left Washington and wrote from Baltimore, where he stopped over Sunday with a friend, on February 13:—­

MY DEAR FATHER,—­The heart-rending tidings which you communicated reached me in Washington on Friday evening.  I left yesterday morning, spend this day here at Mr. Cushing’s, and set out on my return home to-morrow.  I shall reach Philadelphia on Monday night, New York on Tuesday night, and New Haven on Wednesday night.