T H E L A D I E S '   R E P O S I T O R Y .

O C T O B E R,   1 8 4 7 .

      WE can look with some complacency on the departure of the aged man, who, like the ripe grain of autumn, bends himself submissively to the sickle of the reaper, Death. The end of his being is accomplished; he has seen the sunshine and shade of human life--tasted of its mingled cup; and, wearied of life, looks calmly to the grave, as a quiet resting-place. As we survey the fall of the leaves of autumn, so we look on the death of the aged; for then the tender ties to life are severed--the fires of fancy are flickering on the deserted hearth of the affections, and the charm of life has departed.

      How different are our sensations, when we see the babe--the object of the mother's tenderest affection--whose face beams with the smiles of innocence, and whose young heart is unstained by sin, sinking beneath the hand of the tyrant, and, almost as soon as life is given, yielding it back to God! We then feel emotions of sorrow stealing over the soul; but our sadness is, in some degree, mitigated by the remembrance of the purity of the spirit which has just taken its flight, like some fair bud of promise which withered ere it bloomed, or the trembling dewdrop which, at eve, empearled the rose, but which, at morn, being dissipated by the genial beams of the sun, leaves this cold earth, and flies upward to the bright source of life and light.

      Youth, elate and gay, blooming in smiles and beauty, passes away from earth; and we mourn that Death should choose his victims from those whom bright hopes allure with the pleasing prospect of a bright future, whose shadowy vistas seem to present us with the full fruition of all that life's joyous spring-time promised.

      Such events as these are calculated to bring before our minds a deep and abiding sense of our own frailty, the uncertainty of the present state of being, and the deep necessity of preparing for another. The instances to which we have thus briefly alluded, are but so many voices, which are ever speaking to man of his own mortality, and teaching him to prepare for his last solemn change. Yes, ever since the decree went forth from Eden, "Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return," the history of the world has been the proof of its melancholy fulfillment.

      Death has truly been on the throne, and he has ever swayed a ruthless sceptre. Some have been stricken down on the battle plain; others have fallen under the insidious attacks of wasting disease; the palace and the dungeon have alike been visited; from all these Death has won his trophies, and filled unnumbered graves with the wise and the good of our race; and yet, amid scenes like these, of almost daily occurrence, we are unmoved. [291]

      Our fellow-beings fall by our sides every hour, and yet they oft fall unmourned, while we, cold and unthinking, scarcely ever reflect, that we, too, must soon join the melancholy train. How often, too, does the tolling bell tell us of a departed spirit; and yet, too often, the thought of death departs with the solemn tones by which it was wakened! But yet there are times and places, when the subject is pressed upon us with a force which we are unable to resist. The family circle is invaded; and those we have tenderly loved, from our earliest years, become the prey of the fell destroyer; the bands which for years have bound us are severed, and the cold grave hides in its dark recesses the forms of the loved and the cherished.

      But there is no place on earth, where the ties of affection seem to be more rudely sundered than at institutions of learning. At such places the young and the happy, the hoping and the trusting are assembled. Hearts are there bound together by the purest feelings; and the terms of intimacy are so close, that the breaking of these bands is an incident in the lives of the survivors not easily forgotten. Then, morning, noon, and evening, we meet at the same board, assemble in the same room for prayer, and, in the same class, drink as from a common fountain the deep draughts of classic lore. In thought we roam over the scenes ennobled by Homer's or by Virgil's strain--stand near Cicero in the Forum, or hear, in Minerva's favorite city the thunder tones of Demosthenes. The song of Anacreon and the wild sweet strain of Sappho fall upon our ears; and thus, in the bloom of ardent youth, we learn to live "over the bright days of the past."

      There we see the gradual development of each other's faculties, the varied feelings of our nature gradually unfolding themselves. There genius begins its towering flight, and there the hidden springs of thought and feeling are called into active operation, and, almost insensibly, young hearts are united by bands which death alone can sever. When we remember, then, that it is at such places the deepest and most endearing of our attachments are formed, we shall not think it by any means strange, that death, under such circumstances, should impress itself deeply on the hearts of the survivors. For my own part, experience has told me that such is the case; and, in all the vista of departed years, there are few events which have left so deep an impression on my heart as the death of a college classmate, whose death is the subject of the following sketch. I think I never saw a finer class of students than that which was assembled at B. College, in the fall of 184--. They were chiefly from the western and southern portions of the Union; and well did they sustain the character of the various states which they represented. Among these there was none more universally esteemed than young S. He possessed all the fiery ambition of the south, accompanied by a courtliness of manners which soon procured for him the esteem of all. His mind was of the finest mold; and his intense application soon secured to him a high place in his respective classes.

      Though he rose rapidly in favor, he was by no means an object of envy; but, on the contrary, his success was a source of great gratification to all with whom he was associated. Hope presented before him a brightly illumined future, and he looked forward with pleasure to the time when his course of study would he completed, and he would be permitted to enter upon the scenes of active life, and by an energetic course justify, and more than justify the hopes of all with whom he was connected.

      But, alas! though apparently so full of life, he was soon destined to leave our number, and enter upon that state of untried being to which we are all fast hastening. Indeed, we had scarcely learned to properly appreciate his merit, when we were called upon to deplore his loss. We were not prepared for his death by the premonitions of wasting disease; for he yielded rather to deep anguish of mind than bodily infirmity, and his departure was sudden and unexpected to all. It was evident to those who knew him best, that, for some time, he had been suffering much. Deep mental distress was preying upon him, and slowly and silently was bearing him to the grave; and yet his proud spirit would not suffer him to reveal fully the bitter anguish which was consuming him; but deep disappointment and blighted affection, beyond all doubt, was at the foundation of all his sorrows. And a letter, which was returned unopened by one in whom his very being seemed bound up, goaded his mind almost to madness, and cast a gloom upon him which he found himself unable to dissipate. His health began visibly to decline; but the torture which he endured was such as baffled human skill; and yet he kept locked in his own bosom the cause of the suffering which seemed pressing him to the earth.

      At this time S. had never turned his mind to the considerations of his eternal interests; but, as if he had a foreboding of his fate, he now began to read the word of God with the greatest solicitude. All around him daily marked the change which was taking place in his character. His great concern seemed to he in regard to his final destiny; and on the Sabbath before his death, when an invitation was given by the minister to any who felt disposed to unite with the visible Church, S., who was present, arose; but at that moment a swooning sensation seized him, and forced him again to his seat. Charity, however, would lead us to indulge in the hope, that the effort was seen and accepted in heaven. The day before his death he was able to walk about the college grounds, and none dreamed of the near approach of his dissolution; but before the next morning dawned, we were aroused from our slumbers by the melancholy announcement that the spirit of our friend had for ever fled. There were no [292] clamorous outbursts of sorrow: tears and outward laments were few; yet the gloom on every countenance, and the unusual silence which reigned through the whole building, told, in tones which could not be misunderstood, the grief which possessed every heart. The bell which summoned us to our morning meal sounded, and we descended almost mechanically. The merry laugh and the accustomed jest were wanting; the brow of the most youthful was clouded; the seat of poor S. was vacant; and we all felt a corresponding desolation in our hearts. The meal passed almost in silence. If we spoke, it was but in whispers; for all felt truly that death was in our midst. We retired as we came; and soon the heavy, monotonous tolling of the college bell summoned us together, to take measures concerning the burial of our classmate, and to express our sympathy for his bereaved friends.

      The meeting was organized by calling one of the seniors to the chair, who arose, and, in a subdued tone, spoke of the object of our mournful assembling. He alluded feelingly to the character of the deceased, and passed a brief but touching eulogy on the virtues for which he was distinguished. He referred to the solemn duties we had to discharge--the last offices the living can pay to the dead. In doing this his lip quivered, and his voice faltered; and, almost overcome by the violence of his feelings, the speaker sat down, while the most careless observer might have learned, from the countenances of all around him, that these few and solemn words were but the feelings of all assembled. A committee was then appointed to give an embodied expression of our feelings, and to express our sympathy for his sorrowing friends in this sad bereavement. The completion of the resolutions was announced, and the chairman, in low, solemn tones, expressed, in appropriate words, the emotions of our hearts; and though a considerable length of time has now passed, I yet seem to hear his voice rising and falling with the mournful periods which told of the death of our beloved classmate, far from his home and the associates of his youth. Appended to these resolutions were the following lines, as a tribute to the memory of the departed, written by a classmate who knew and loved him:

      At length the hour of burial came; and though the wintry blast blew keenly, every one was ready to follow the body to its last resting-place. The corpse was first borne to the chapel, the students following two by two, while the college bell, at intervals, tolled mournfully, like a requiem to a departed spirit. The coffin was placed in the aisle of the chapel; and, with the evidence of our own mortality before us, we were solemnly and feelingly admonished, by the president, of the transitory nature of all things beneath the sun, and exhorted to look from the things that are fading to those which are eternal. The good man was deeply affected, and his emotions more than once almost checked his utterance. He pressed home on our mind the lesson which lay before us, in the body of our departed friend, who, in the bloom of life, had been suddenly called away. We all heard and felt, while the scalding tear gushed freely from many an eye which had long been unaccustomed to weep, and many a heart resolved, from that day forward, to yield implicit obedience to those truths which, if obeyed, result in our eternal salvation. The exercises closed. The coffin, borne on the shoulders of some of our number, was carried to the grave. All stand around his last resting-place; his remains were deposited in the narrow cell; the clods fell heavily on the coffin; the sound gradually became fainter and fainter, until the grave was closed; and thus earth was committed to earth. We left the spot, and returned to our usual pursuits, in order to dissipate, by employment, the gloom which brooded over us. But it was many days, and even weeks, before the effects of this solemn event passed away. We missed him in the class-room--we missed his merry laugh amid our sports, and there was scarcely a spot with which his memory was not in some way associated.

      But he has departed--cut off in the spring-time of his life--from expectant friends-from bright hopes, which sported before his vision--from the changing to the changeless--from the seen to the unseen--from the transitory and temporal to the fadeless and eternal. His resting-place is near the margin of a beautiful stream, whose soft murmurs are calculated to soothe and soften the feelings of all who pass near [293] the tomb of the departed; and often, when straying, in a pensive mood, near that spot, I love to pause at the little inclosure which surrounds the place of his rest, to call up to memory's gaze the form that, ere this, has mingled with its kindred dust, and, from his untimely departure, to give to my own heart a solemn lesson on the instability of all earthly things, the certainty of death, and the need of preparing for that trying hour.

      Reader, let us, too, be admonished. We, too, are mortal. We, too, are destined to enter the final resting-place of all the living. Let us, then, pursue such a course of conduct as will be well-pleasing to the great Judge of all; and the grave, instead of being the object of our horror and aversion, will seem, to our fading sight, the portal of a bright and eternal day.

[The Ladies' Repository 7 (October 1847): 291-294.]

      William Baxter's "Death of a Student" was first published in The Ladies' Repository, and Gatherings of the West: A Monthly Periodical Devoted to Literature and Religion, Vol. 7, No. 10, October 1847, pp. 291-294. This volume, edited by B. F. Tefft, was published in Cincinnati by L. Swormstedt and J. T. Mitchell and in New York by G. Lane and C. B. Tippett for the Methodist Episcopal Church.

      Pagination in the electronic version has been represented by placing the page number in brackets following the last complete word on the printed page.

      Addenda and corrigenda are earnestly solicited.

Ernie Stefanik
Derry, PA

Created 10 April 2000.
Updated 28 June 2003.