fraud. It is hard, when we have placed our confidence in
man's honor, or his friendship, to find that we are fools,
and that we have been led in among rocks and serpents. And
hard indeed is it to see those who were worthy our love and
our faith drop by our side, and leave us alone. This dear
child, the blossom of so many hopes, -- hard is it to see him
die -- to fold all our expectation in his little shroud, and
lay it away forever. We thought it had been he who should
have comforted and blessed us, --in whose life we could have
retraced the cycle of our own happiest experience, --whose
unfolding faculties would have been a renewal of our
knowledge, and his manhood not merely the prop but the
refreshing of our age. This companion of our lot, -- this
wedded wife of our heart, - why taken away now? She has
shared our early struggles, and tempered our anxiety with
cheerful assurance. She has tasted the bitterness; we
thought she would have been a partner of the joy. She has
borne our fretfulness, and helped our perplexity, and shed a
serene light into our gloom; We thought she would have been
with us when we could pay the debt of faithfulness; when the
cares of business did not press and disturb us so. We
thought it was she whose voice, sweet with the music of old,
deep memories, would have consoled us far along; and that, in
some calm evening of life, when all the tumult of the world
was still, and we were ready to go, we should go -- not far
apart -- gently to our graves.

Such are the plans that we lay out, saying of this thing and
of that thing, "We trusted that it would have been so." But
the answer has been disappointment. The old, ay, perhaps the