The breaking up of our homes is one of the mysteries of God’s providence.  The last thing, perhaps, which we might suppose would be allowed, is, the removal of a mother from a family of young children.  This being so frequent, we cease to wonder at any other dispensations; we conclude that separations are to be made, regardless of any and every seeming necessity and endearment.  “Sirs, I perceive that this voyage will be with hurt and much damage, not only of the lading and ship, but also of our lives.”  The conviction is forced upon us that there is another world, for which we must make all our calculations.  “There is a better world,” said the distinguished William Wirt, after the death of his daughter, in 1831,—­“there is a better world, of which I have thought too little.  To that world she has gone, and thither my affections have followed her.  This was Heaven’s design.  I see and feel it as distinctly as if an angel had revealed it.  I often imagine that I can see her beckoning me to the happy world to which she has gone.  She was my companion, my office companion, my librarian, my clerk.  My papers now bear her indorsement.  She pursued her studies in my office, by my side, sat with me, walked with me, was my inexpressibly sweet and inseparable companion,—­never left me but to go and sit with her mother.  We knew all her intelligence, all her pure and delicate sensibility, the quickness and power of her perceptions, her seraphic love.  She was all love, and loved all God’s creation, even the animals, trees, and plants.  She loved her God and Saviour with an angel’s love, and died like a saint."[A]

[Footnote A:  Kennedy’s Life of William Wirt—­letter to Judge Carr.]

About the same time, he writes to his wife,—­

“I want only my blessed Saviour’s assurance of pardon and acceptance to be at peace.  I wish to find no rest short of rest in him,—­Let us both look up to that heaven—­where our Saviour dwells, and from which he is showing us the attractive face of our blessed and happy child, and bidding us prepare to come to her, since she can no more visibly come to us.  I have no taste now for worldly business.  I go to it reluctantly.  I would keep company only with my Saviour and his holy book.  I dread the world, the strife, and contention, and emulation of the bar; yet I will do my duty—­this is part of my religion.”

In December, 1833, another daughter died; but he writes,—­

“I look upon life as a drama, bearing the same sort, though not the same degree, of relation to eternity, as an hour spent at the theatre, and the fictions there exhibited ... do to the whole of real life.  Nor is there any thing in this passing pageant worth the sorrow that we lavish on it.  Now, when my children or friends leave me, or when I shall be called to leave them, I consider it as merely parting for the present visit, to meet under happier circumstances, when we shall part no more."[B]

[Footnote B:  Kennedy’s Life of William Wirt—­letter to Judge Cabell.]