_May_ 16.--I have not written in my diary for a month and it has been the saddest month of my life. Dear, dear Grandfather is dead. He was buried May 2, just two weeks from the day that he returned from New York. We did everything for him that could be done, but at the end of the first week the doctors saw that he was beyond all human aid. Uncle Thomas told the doctors that they must tell him. He was much surprised but received the verdict calmly. He said "he had no notes out and perhaps it was the best time to go." He had taught us how to live and he seemed determined to show us how a Christian should die. He said he wanted "Grandmother and the children to come to him and have all the rest remain outside." When we came into the room he said to Grandmother, "Do you know what the doctors say?" She bowed her head, and then he motioned for her to come on one side and Anna and me on the other and kneel by his bedside. He placed a hand upon us and upon her and said to her, "All the rest seem very much excited, but you and I must be composed." Then he asked us to say the 23d Psalm, "The Lord is my Shepherd," and then all of us said the Lord's Prayer together after Grandmother had offered a little prayer for grace and strength in this trying hour. Then he said, "Grandmother, you must take care of the girls, and, girls, you must take care of Grandmother." We felt as though our hearts would break and were sure we never could be happy again. During the next few days he often spoke of dying and of what we must do when he was gone. Once when I was sitting by him he looked up and smiled and said, "You will lose all your roses watching over me." A good many business men came in to see him to receive his parting blessing. The two McKechnie brothers, Alexander and James, came in together on their way home from church the Sunday before he died. Dr. Daggett came very often. Mr. Alexander Howell and Mrs. Worthington came, too.
He lived until Saturday, the 30th, and in the morning he said, "Open the door wide." We did so and he said, "Let the King of Glory enter in." Very soon after he said, "I am going home to Paradise," and then sank into that sleep which on this earth knows no waking. I sat by the window near his bed and watched the rain beat into the grass and saw the peonies and crocuses and daffodils beginning to come up out of the ground and I thought to myself, I shall never see the flowers come up again without thinking of these sad, sad days. He was buried Monday afternoon, May 2, from the Congregational church, and Dr. Daggett preached a sermon from a favorite text of Grandfather's, "I shall die in my nest." James and John came and as we stood with dear Grandmother and all the others around his open grave and heard Dr. Daggett say in his beautiful sympathetic voice, "Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust," we felt that we were losing our best friend; but he told us that we must live for Grandmother and so we will.