Chapter XVII

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AUGUSTA LARNED’S TRIBUTE.

The following tribute was written by Miss Augusta Larned, and published in the _Christian Register_ of July 28, 1892:

There is one master link in the family bond, as there is one
keystone in the arch. Often we know not its binding power until it
is taken away. Then the home begins to crumble and fall into
confusion, and the distinct atoms, like beads from a broken string,
roll off into distant corners. We turn our thoughts to one who made
the ideal home, pervaded it, filled its every part like air and
sunshine coming in at open windows, as unobtrusive as gentle. A
spiritual attraction drew all to this centre. It was not what she
said or did; it was what she was that inclined footsteps to her
door. Those who once felt that subtle, penetrating sweetness felt
they must return to bask in it again and again. So she never lost
friends by a loss more pathetic than death. There were no
dislocations in her life. All was even development and growth.

The good she did seemed to enter the pores of the spirit, and to
uplift in unknown ways the poor degraded ideal of our lives. The
secret of her help was not exuberance, but stillness and rest. Ever
more and more the beautiful secret eluded analysis. It shone out of
her eyes. It lingered in the lovely smile that irradiated her face,
and made every touch and tone a benediction. Even the dullest
perception must have seen that her life was spiritual, based on
unselfishness and charity. Beside her thoughtfulness and tender care
all other kinds of self-abnegation seemed poor. She lived in the
higher range of being. The purity of her face and the clearness of
her eyes was a rebuke to all low motives. But no word of criticism
fell from her lips. She was ready to take into her all-embracing
tenderness those whom others disliked and shunned. Her gentle nature
found a thousand excuses for their faults. Life had been hard with
them; and, for this reason, she must be lenient. The good in each
soul was always present to her perceptions. She reverenced it even
in its evil admixture as a manifestation of the divine.

She shunned the smallest witticism at another’s expense, lest she
should pain or soil that pure inner mirror of conscience by an
exaggeration. Perfect justice was the rule of her life. To the poor
and despised she never condescended, but poured out her love and
charity as the woman of Scripture broke the box of precious ointment
to anoint the Master’s feet. All human beings received their due
meed of appreciation at her hands. She disregarded the conventional
limits a false social order has set up, shunning this one and
honoring that one, because of externals. She was not afraid of
losing her place in society by knowing the wrong people. She went
her way with a strange unworldliness through all the prickly hedges,
daring to be true to her own nature. She drew no arbitrary lines
between human beings. It was the soul that interested her. The rich
were not welcome for their riches, nor the poor for their poverty;
but all were welcome for their humanity.

Her door was as the door of a shrine because the fair amenities were
always found within. Hospitality to her was as sacred as the hearth
altar to the ancients. If she had not money to give the mendicant,
she gave that something infinitely better,—the touch of human
kinship. Many came for the dole she had to bestow, the secret
charity that was not taken from her superfluity, but from her need.
Her lowliness of heart was like that of a little child. How could a
stranger suspect that she was a deep and profound student? Her
researches had led her to the largest, most liberal faith in God and
the soul and the spirit of Christ incarnate in humanity. The study
of nature, to which she was devoted, showed her no irreconcilable
break between science and religion. She could follow the boldest
flights of the speculative spirit or face the last analysis of the
physicist, while she clung to God and the witness of her own being.
She aimed at an all-round culture, that one part of her nature might
not be dwarfed by over-balance and disproportion.

But it was the high thinking that went on with the daily doing of
common duties that made her life so exceptional. A scholar in the
higher realms of knowledge, a thinker, a seeker after truth, but,
above all, the mother, the wife, the bread-giver to the household.
It was a great privilege to know this woman who aped not others’
fashions, who had better and higher laws to govern her life, who
admitted no low motive in her daily walk, who made about her, as by
a magician’s wand, a sacred circle, free from all gossip, envy,
strife, and pettiness, who kept all bonds intact by constancy and
undimmed affection, and has left a memory so sacred few can find
words to express what she was to her friends.

* * * * *

But love and self-forgetfulness and tender service wear out the
silver cord. It was fretted away silently, without complaint, the
face growing ever more seraphic, at moments almost transparent with
the shining of an inner light. One trembled to look on that
spiritual beauty. Surely, the light of a near heaven was there.
Silently, without complaint or murmur, she was preparing for the
great change. Far-away thoughts lay mirrored in her clear, shining
eyes. She had seen upon the mount the pattern of another life. Still
no outward change in duty-doing, in tender care for others. Then one
day she lay down and fell asleep like a little child on its mother’s
breast, with the inscrutable smile on her lips. She who had been
“mothering” everybody all her life long was at last gathered gently
and painlessly into the Everlasting Arms.

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