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Born to the grave ere it had seen the light,The second child (Clark Thomas) lived only eleven days. She thus writes of him:--
Or with one smile had cheered my longing sight.
Ten days I hold him in my joyful arms,Sensibility, benevolence, and devotion were salient traits in Mrs. Turell's character. Her husband says of her, “Some unhappy affairs in Medford, in the years 1729-30, produced many prayers and tears from her.” He says elsewhere, “It was her practice to read the Bible out in course once in a year; the book of Psalms much oftener; besides many chapters and a multitude of verses, which she kept turned down in a Bible which she had been the owner and reader of more than twenty years.” Again he says, “When she apprehended she received injuries, silence and tears were her highest resentments.” The Rev. John Adams writes, after her death, a long letter in verse to Mr. Turell. We give here a few lines:--
And feast my eyes upon his youthful charms;
But then the king of terrors does advance
To pierce its bosom with his iron lance.
Its soul released, upward it takes its flight,
Oh, never more below to bless my sight!
Farewell, sweet babe! I hope to meet above,
And there with you sing our Redeemer's love!
Why hangs such sorrow on your pensive brow?
Say, Turell, why the tears so freely flow?
If you lament the lovely partner fled,
In vain you heave the sigh, or rivers shed;
Nor eloquence can soothe, nor virtue awe,
Nor force repel the power of Nature's law.
Nature had shed upon her ample mind
Its various gifts, which Art had well refined.
Few were her words, but close, and weighty too:
We could not blame, but grieved they were so few.
Nor was she vain, nor stained with those neglects
In which too learned females lose their sex.
The tender ties of nuptial life she graced,
And all the mother to the child expressed.
The best of daughters in her carriage shown,
She felt the friend, and charmed the weeping town.
E'en now the flowing numbers left behind
Reflect the features of her virtuous mind;
Nor yet, of all the nymphs that grace the plain,
Has one appeared to sing so sweet a strain.
But most Devotion did its power diffuse,--
Soul of her soul, the spirit of her Muse.
