An Extract.
WELL do I recollect some years ago, when duty had called me away with my regimens to a foreign land, an event which, from the melancholy circumstances attending it, has in delibly graven thoughts of “Home” on my memory.
It was the height of summer, and a tropical sun had just set, and a cool refreshing sea breeze floated over the parched and burning air which we were inhaling with delight. A fever peculiar to the climate had prostrated many of all ranks, and proved fatal in some instances; and amongst the convalescent was a young officer in whom I had taken a great personal interest, His strength, however, not recruiting as rapidly as could be wished, the medical authorities advised his return to England, for a short furlough; and just as the mess bugle had sounded, and I was preparing to dress, he came in in high spirits, but with tottering steps, to tell me that, on that very evening a steamer was expected, he had obtained leave to embark, and he heartily wished me good bye. His last words were, “I am going home tonight; and perhaps the steamer will come in before you leave the mess; if not, see me off.”
It was midnight before we left the mess-room; and on walking to my quarters, I found a lamp burning in my friend’s room. I looked in and found him sleeping soundly, but apparently breathing very loudly. I went up to him, and found all my efforts to awaken him unavailing. I immediately summoned the doctor, and to my horror all my worst anticipations were realized, for he at once pronounced him to be dying. All that medical skill could suggest, or that friendship could devise, was done, but he never recovered his consciousness; and, strange enough, three hours after I had discovered his state, and just as the signal gun was fired to announce the arrival of the steamer, in which he had engaged his passage, his spirit passed away. He was gone home. His soul had winged its flight to glory. He had lived to Christ on earth, and he was now at home in the mansions which Christ hath prepared for them that love Him.
A blood-vessel bursting in his sleep, had caused his untimely end; but by his bedside lay the Bible, which he had just read before he slept that fatal sleep. He had gone from worshipping in a foreign land, to worship evermore in the home of his heavenly Father, where no partings ever take place. Earthly friends were expecting him in an earthly home, for he was “the only son of his mother, and she was a widow,” but it was decreed that that meeting should never be an earth.