Chapter 26
chapter eight of part two of the lives of the three mrs dudson's by arabella m wilson this librivox recording is in the public domain chapter eight death of their first-born letters from mrs b in the spring of eighteen twenty nine mr boardman and his family made a short sea voyage for the benefit of their health mrs boardman having experienced another attack of illness and their little george being frail and puny indeed none of the family seemed to have been healthy with the plump rosy-cheeked first-born the darling sarah her mother's joy and pride as her heavenly father saw her idol too Terrible was the stroke that shattered that lovely idol, but it came, so faith assured her, from a father's hand. Some time afterward, she writes,
My ever dear sister, I think I have not written you since the death of our beloved Sarah, which is nearly eight months ago. I have never delayed writing you so long before. for some time after her death, little George was apparently near the grave, and I was confined to my bed for a number of weeks. As soon as my health was a little improved,
the rebellion at Tabway took place, which threw us all into confusion, and this lasted until I was taken ill again about three months since. From this illness I am but just recovering. So you see, my beloved sister, my outward circumstances have been sufficient to prevent my writing.
Nor is this all, for some time after little Sarah's departure, I was too much distressed to write. I felt assured that God had taken her away from us in love, but also was assured that she is a happy angel in heaven. But, oh, the thought that we should see her no more on earth,
filled me with indescribable sorrow by degree my mind became calmer not that i forgot her but i feel my dear harriet that the dearest and sweetest pleasures of this life are empty and altogether unsatisfying i do not look for comfort from these sources as i formerly did we have a fine healthy boy but i do not allow myself to idolize him as i did his dear departed sister in her dissolution we saw such a wreck of what was most lovely and beautiful that it seems as if we should be kept in future from worshipping the creature particulars respecting the child's illness and death are given in another letter of nearly the same date our little sarah left us july eighth of last year aged two years and eight months she was a singularly lovely child her bright blue eyes yellow hair and rosy cheeks formed a striking contrast to the little dark faces around her
from the time she began to notice anything we were the objects of her fondest love if she thought she had incurred our displeasure her tender heart seemed ready to burst and she could not rest for a moment until she had said she was sorry and obtained the kiss of forgiveness she had learned to obey us implicitly if either of us were ill she would stroke our foreheads with her little soft hand and kiss us so affectionately her love to her little brother george was unlimited from the day of his birth till the day but one before she died he was her idol three days before she died she was lying uneasily in a soft swing cradle and george was in the same room crying we thought it might soothe the little sufferer for he was very ill to lay him down beside sarah the proposal delighted her with smiles she threw open her little arms and for the last time held her little darling brother in her fond embrace
so great was her gratification at this privilege that she seemed to forget her own pains little sarah spoke english remarkably well for so young a child and burmese like a native she could also say some things in hindostani and karen and what seems a little singular she never confounded two languages but always spoke pure english to us and pure burmese to burmans this discrimination continued as long as she had the powers of speech she had learned the lord's prayer and several little hymns dr judson's line on the death of me shawnee she knew by heart in bernese and used to chant them for half an hour at a time these things may seem very trivial to you but i muse upon them by the hour together and it is only when i call my cooler judgment into action that i can make myself believe they are uninteresting to any persons on earth i love to think my sweet bud of immortality expanding so beautifully in my own presence and fancy i can judge in some small degree of the brilliancy of the perfect flower from these little developments
a few hours before she died she called us to her kissed us and passed her dear hand still full and dimpled as in health softly over our faces the pupils of her eyes were so dilated that she could not see us distinctly and once for a moment or two her mind seemed to be wandering and then looking anxiously into my face she said i frightened mamma i frightened oh with what feelings did i wash and dress her lovely form for the last time and compose her perfect little limbs and then see her the dear child that had so long lain in my bosom borne away to her newly made grave my heart grew faint when i thought that i had performed for her my last office of love that she would never need a mother's hand again my dear husband performed the funeral service with an aching though not desponding heart the grave is our own enclosure
about fifteen rods from the house a beautiful retired spot in a grove of ganggu trees near it is a little bethel erected for private devotion thither we have often repaired and we trust that god who is in his infinite wisdom had taken our treasure to himself often meets us there the biographer of mrs boardman since her successor in the mission mentions that a single speculative error had crept into a religious faith on the subject of god's particular providence and while contemplating the vastness of that agency that ever busy wheels the silent spears she had almost thought it derogatory to the majesty of heaven and earth to conceive of him as occupied with our mean affairs numbering the hairs of our heads and guiding the sparrows fall but the blow which crushed her heart destroyed its skepticism she saw so clearly in this dispensation the hand of a father chastening his erring child
she felt so keenly that she deserved the rod for having in a measure worshipped the gift more than the giver that she believed with all her strength of an irresistible conviction that even so lowly a thing as her own heart was indeed a theatre for the constant display of her maker's guiding and controlling power not less than the starry heavens that her own sanctification and the providential means to effect it even in their minutest details were ordered by sovereign grace and wisdom and from this time forth she never doubted again but it is time to detail the spirit-stirring scenes that occurred a few months after the death of the child to which scenes allusion was made in the first of her two letters chapter eight
