Lydia Maria Child, Isaac T. Hopper: a true life

[480] at the papers which were handed him; but the old man's eyes were dimmed with death, and he could not see the writing. After two or three feeble and ineffectual attempts, he took off his spectacles, with a trembling hand, and gave them to his beloved daughter, Sarah, saying, ‘Take them, my child, and keep them. They were thy dear mother's. I can never use them more.’ The scene was inexpressibly affecting; and we all wept to see this untiring friend of mankind compelled at last to acknowledge that he could work no longer.

Of his sixteen children, ten were living; and all but two of them were able to be with him in these last days. He addressed affectionate exhortations to them at various times; and a few hours before he died, he called them, one by one, to his bedside, to receive his farewell benediction. At last, he whispered my name; and as I knelt to kiss his hand, he said in broken accents, and at long intervals, ‘Maria, tell them I loved them——though I felt called to resist——some who claimed to be rulers in Israel ——I never meant——.’ His strength was nearly exhausted; but after a pause, he pressed my hand, and added, ‘Tell them I love them all.’ I had previously asked and obtained permission to write his biography; and from these broken sentences, I understood that he wished me to convey in it a message to the Society of Friends; including the ‘Orthodox’