for the last day of suffering which I was to endure. A few friends had
been invited to dine with me, and I prepared to meet them. They came at
the hour appointed with smiling faces and warm and friendly greetings;
and I received them as if nothing had happened, with even a more
enthusiastic welcome than was my wont.

"Oh! it is terrible to smile when the heart is breaking! to talk
lightly and freely and mirthfully, when every feeling of the mind is
wrung with unutterable agony; to mingle in the laugh and in the gay
volleys of convivial fellowship,

'With the difficult utterance of one
Whose heart is with an iron nerve put down.'

"Yet all this I endured, hour after hour, until my friends departed and I
had pressed their hands as at a common parting, while my heart whispered
an everlasting farewell!

"It was late when they left me. I walked out to look for the last time
upon Nature in her exceeding beauty. I hardly acknowledged to myself
that such was my purpose; but yet I did feel that it was so; and that I
was taking an everlasting farewell of the beautiful things around me.
The sun was just setting; and the hills, that rose like pillars of the
blue horizon, were glowing with a light which was fast deserting the
valleys. It was an evening of summer; everything was still; not a leaf
stirred in the dark, overshadowing foliage; but, silent and beautiful as
a picture, the wide scenery of rock and hill and woodland, stretched
away before me; and, beautiful as it was, it seemed to possess a newness
and depth of beauty beyond its ordinary appearance, as if to aggravate
the pangs of the last, long farewell.