fo 
 
 tv Comfort the 
 Jlj Sorrowing, 
 
 * j ~ to Relieve the f d Light to the 
 
 Blind: 
 
 Sphere. 
 
 letter 
 
 ^ 
 
 1
 
 ae recently published memoir of 
 .fcinily Sanford Billings, written by her 
 husband, Judge Edward C. Billings, of 
 the United States District Court of this 
 State, is one of tlie moat -touching and 
 beautiful tributes ever paid to the dead 
 by the living, and -will be read with 
 much interest iu NJw Orleans, where 
 Mrs. Billings was so general a favorite. 
 
 The book is a twofold revelation. 
 To those vrho knew, but not intimately, 
 the subject of the sketch, it is a revela- 
 tion of a depth and fascination of char- 
 acter under a quiet demeanor and of 
 talent which amounts to genius ; and a 
 revelation of surpassing tenderness and 
 devotion, and a, poetic power of 
 ideality both of thought and of feeling 
 possessed by the brilliant jurist, the 
 author of the sketch, which is a pleas- 
 ant surprise even to his nearest and 
 most appreciative friends. 
 
 With a loving-heartedness that seeks 
 to bind together the memories of the 
 two women who were his best beloved 
 his mother and his wife, his first love 
 and his last the author dedicates his 
 book: 
 
 "TO MY SWEET MOTHER, HKPSEY DICK- 
 
 INSON BILLINGS, 
 
 with tne hope that even by a tie so 
 frail and perishable as words of mine 
 may be linked the memory of her who 
 first revealed to Jiie the sacredness in 
 woman's .5 01 iier 
 
 who in all tho relations of life so con- 
 spicuously and endearingly illustrated 
 that sanctity. That these two beings, 
 who had, as typical mother and wife, 
 successively stood by my side, like an- 
 gels, inciting to all that was good and 
 resisting temptation to all that was 
 bad, and who first met as seraphs in 
 heaven, might each occupy her own fit- 
 tme relations to the worth herein re- 
 corded, the one having prepared me by 
 the hints and suggestions froru the 
 depths of her own serene and loving 
 nature to regard as possible, and appre- 
 sicite when found, tbo more broadly 
 unfolded and more brilliantly beauti- 
 fied excellencies of the other. So that 
 she who did but foreshadow andi>r< 
 uro may be associated with her who at- 
 tained to and who embodied in her 
 shining life euch unwoiidliuess, such 
 affinity with goodness, such steadfast- 
 ness for the right and such purposes 
 born of heaven." 
 
 Did ever the dedication of a book pay 
 higher tribute to woman under the 
 sacred names of mother and wife than 
 this ? It should endear the chivalrous 
 and manly author to the heart of every 
 mother and wife in the land, and win 
 for him the gratitude, sympathy and 
 appreciation of eve;-y cultured woman 
 who turns the pages of the book. 
 
 It is not only a eulogy of her whom it 
 eoir.iueuiorates, but of all womankind 
 a crown of glory sat upon her daily 
 life. 
 
 
 The preface, of which we give a part, 
 is as touching and beautiful as the 
 dedication. Listen: 
 
 "This sketch was undertaken for 
 several reasons. 
 
 " Upon the death of the fondly loved 
 there abides for the survivor an every- 
 where diffused, ever present sense of 
 loss of tne oppression of pain and soli- 
 tude, a void coextensive with mental 
 associations; almost an absence ol what 
 made existence personal. 
 
 " Slowly, sometimes not till life on 
 earth becomes nearly all a retrospect- 
 its chastening all wrought into charac- 
 termonies to the mourner from out the 
 ashes' of the grave the promised 
 'beauty' comes that ideal presence of 
 our cherished dead which to the spirit- 
 ual senses brings something of the look 
 and fellowship, the high and brave en- 
 couragement, the 
 
 li i.;o ueukoiiiiig uli 
 
 01 their living selves. 
 
 " ' The prospect and horizon gone, 
 every landscape is dreary, every shore 
 barren. Our being, which yesterday 
 was 1'ull of vigor and crowned with ver- 
 dure, is to-day withered as if smitten 
 by the killing frost. 80 that the utter- 
 ly bereaved seems to be separated, far 
 away, from his own life. The connec- 
 tion between the soul and interest in 
 external objects is paralyzed. 
 
 " As ' deep has thus called unto deep/ 
 ' his waves and billows going over me,' 
 ftvery phase and incident of the life 
 herein outiiaed has won me to its con- 
 templation, as in some sense to a com- 
 munion with that vanished life." 
 
 Is not that beautiful? Ah, something 
 even more than beautiful; it is like a 
 strain of sweet and commanding music 
 ail the way through. 
 
 Farther on, in the heart of the book, 
 the author, speaking of hia marriage, 
 says: 
 
 " We were married in New Haven, in 
 Centre Church, where for the period of 
 fifty-eight years her parents had wor- 
 hiped, the calm air and sacred associ- 
 ations of which she had enjoyed through 
 childhood and youth, and almost on the 
 very spot where, twenty years before, I 
 had stood in delivering my philosoph- 
 ical oration at commencement. 
 
 "O ye joys which beam upon and 
 beckon to us from out the glad future 
 which lies before youth, and which oft- 
 times fade from us, obscured by the 
 sorrows and narrowing struggles of 
 later years, how did ye then come 
 thronging back to me with your old- 
 time, glowing aspect, and with all the 
 rapture and twice the tenderness of 
 your early promise 1" 
 
 And in another place he says: 
 " The radiant and pure spirit of 
 beauty that walks hand in hand with 
 true marriage, comes it like the wind 
 which bloweth where it listeth, with- 
 out visible origin ? So that it is found, 
 or alas, missed without cause? O no; 
 it emanates from what are among the 
 most real, as well as the best of human 
 attributes. It has its origin and sus- 
 tenance in mutual, implicit trust, 
 'heart answering to heart as 
 face to face in water ;' iu 
 aims and aspirations formed and 
 kept so receptive, so impressible, that 
 similitude, almost identity results; one 
 string responding to another with music 
 when 10 ia not smitten because the key 
 or p; same and because there 
 
 are boruo to it by the pulses of the air 
 its owu cognate vibrations, awakening 
 its note and compel 
 
 that law of harmony which slumbers 
 in all created things." 
 It almost takes one's breath away to
 
 e with such words as 
 4 distinguised jurist who is 
 deal only with he.." 
 
 ug out the hand for a 
 
 1 branch aud to find it 
 
 d with the beauty and 
 
 Like entering with 
 
 rambling into the presence of 
 
 : nd godlike majesty ex- 
 
 iiilled to numbness, and 
 
 ly feel the glowing warmth of 
 
 lire of the poet's heart. 
 
 Ah, Judge Billings, Nature intended 
 
 you for a poet before Law confined you 
 
 in a suit of mail and drew over it a 
 
 judge' ; wig and gown ! 
 
 That the whole book is a labor of 
 
 is manifest in every een- 
 
 ; but besides this Judge Bil- 
 
 gs to his work a clear 
 
 .1 acuteness of anal- 
 
 ulness of description that 
 
 ct clearly before us and 
 
 as he wishes us to know 
 
 the wise, loving, sympathetic, gentle. 
 
 aud inflexibly just woman who had, as 
 
 he beautifully quotes, " the sweetest 
 
 soul that ever looked with human 
 
 eyes." 
 
 It is, of course, impossible to here 
 
 give more than the briefest synopsis of 
 
 J,he little book. The story of Mrs. Bil- 
 
 na"'lrfa ami character and her final 
 
 sufferings and lieroio death are told ! 
 \vith an almost dramatic directness. 
 Mrs. Billings was a native of New 
 
 the City of Elms, and a daugh- w ; 
 of one of the early merchant ' 
 c ices of that city from whom she in- 
 ted not only great wealth but a 
 rous intellect, a sturdy indepen- 
 ^and a wide benevolence. She re- 
 " the best education this country 
 give, which was widened and 
 " by long foreign travel and 
 vnd by association with the best 
 both at home and abroad. Her 
 Veins to have early turned to- , 
 jterature, and the published ex- 
 e*^om her writings show her to 
 r tj, eu a graceful and powerful 
 c She excelled in epigramatic 
 ess of expression, and her let- 
 Hind in such aphorisms as 
 
 "/"' 
 *i;oo generous to see the faults of 
 
 r ( too noble to proclaim them 
 
 e *- \ -obation, the winning 
 $2 25. I ommaud respect one 
 ',_ \ ^ natural abilities, to 
 
 , only be worihy of 
 employment, 
 ')ut the insignificant 
 .ity from their 
 
 is more 
 
 \ -tfenown, for it is 
 \ Lit is easy to de- 
 
 '% 
 
 j jo nature and her 
 'i<; JOHT* I try show her/ 
 ; c,iation of e</ 
 
 nt IMV 
 - 
 
 pOWj a i 
 
 's ilios; 
 
 from a 
 
 n,.. it 
 
 "Years as, I had stood on tile sell 
 same spot aim seen its flight as hurried, 
 and its rapids dash and foam aa wildly. 
 Had they never rested since f \V ould 
 they always keep pace with the flight 
 ol time if t tired me to think of it ; 
 so 1 turned away in search of the high 
 rocks over which Geogiaphy used to 
 say 670,000 tons of water fall every mo- 
 ment. The mighty rushing sound of 
 manv waters proclaimed them near; 
 and "surrounding space echoed and re- 
 echoed the words, 'Almighty Eternal, 
 Immutable,' from that voice of thunder, 
 which God tuned at the foundation ot 
 the world, to sing His Omnipotence so 
 long as time should last. The whole 
 scene was as if I had left it only yester- 
 day; the river sail flowed on over its 
 emerald bed and the foaming cataract 
 was sending up its incense of spnty, 
 now aa before. 
 
 "Fowler, the famous phrenologist, 
 once told me that I had no bump of 
 Beverenee, and otners vainly have tried 
 to excite the emotion since. 
 
 "The idols to which Society bows 
 have always seemed, like myself, of the 
 earth, earthy, and I have scorned to 
 yield homage to such; but Niagara, the 
 unfathomable, all-conquering and re- 
 sistless, the magnificently-terrible and 
 overwhelmingly grand, seemed a fit 
 shrine at which to bend, and involun- 
 tarily I knelt before it, under the influ- 
 ence of a strange awe that would have 
 trembled into actual fear, had I not 
 chanced to raise my eyes and see God's 
 bow of promise lying on the 'Lunar 
 Fall.' Then I remembered, that though 
 Niagara was great, He that created Ni- 
 agara is greater. 
 
 "The crushed violets beneath me 
 sent forth perfume to whisker that 
 their tiny lives were nourished by 
 the ' cataract's spray ; and little 
 birds sang sweetly over their tor- 
 rent home, knowing tb ->.t 'He careth 
 for them.' So I said to myself ' are you 
 not of more value than many sparrows,' 
 and went on my way along the preci- 
 pice's edge, and, like the flowers and 
 the birds, was not ai'vaid." 
 
 Her description of Hyde Park is an- 
 other bit of fine wotd-painting : 
 
 HYDE PARK. % 
 
 "Far away to the westward of the 
 vast and crowded, .metropolis, stretches 
 t\\& three hundred 'and in 
 u>a 
 
 beautifully diversified -with grassy ! 
 hillocks, clover-gfown knolls, and tiny ; 
 moss- lined valley ft. Through it flow 
 the clear waters ot. the Serpentine, re- 
 flecting flowery blnka, and the leafy 
 branches of tall jrees That rock the 
 nests of summer Ifirds whrsc tlmlung 
 melodies the very beggars are i 
 enough to buy. 
 
 "I never saw anything half so perfect \ 
 as this lovely picture of the country, 
 spread out in the very heart of a great 
 city, to refresh with equal benefit care- 
 worn inhabitants of narrow, thickly 
 crowded alleys, and the sicklier cheeks 
 of the more crowded drawing-room oc- 
 cupants. It gives a charming feature 
 to a city landscape, especially in the 
 eye of one, who comes from a laud 
 where the feverish eagerness to turn 
 everything into gold is always drown- 
 ing the voice of nature in the noisy din 
 of business where trees are only beau- 
 tiful for the cords of wood they will 
 make, and pleasure grounds are eye- 
 sores because they 'might have been sold 
 for three hundred pence,' and turned to 
 mechanical uses 1 
 
 " You should see Hyde Park of a Sun- 
 day, to get an idea of London's popula- 
 tion and London's wealth. You would 
 think it were some gala day, as your 
 eye wandered over the motly throng of 
 
 ' 
 
 ^ "V
 
 triumphal procession tiae 
 stylish looking equipages ' 
 is i'rom one end to the other .. / 
 Those immense grounds. There are ma- 
 jestic cavaliers, beside splendid car- 
 riages tilled with beautiful women in 
 costly rtfbes decorated with golden 
 crests and drawn by superb horses, 
 ^uidedjjj coachmen in powdered wigs 
 and gay TivSfies. The footpaths, too, 
 are thronged with people from a 
 humbler walk of life people in their 
 holiday dresses and their holiday 
 smiles'! The effect is so imposing', that 
 if you were to see only the kaleidoscope 
 views of life that one gets in 
 Hyde Park of a Sunday afternoon, you 
 would take it for an Elysium of beauty 
 and pleasure, rather than the thing of 
 toil and care and somny that it is. 
 But the everyday side of the picture 
 would quickly break the spell. All the 
 live-long week, misery and want and 
 wretchedness are toiling in the self- 
 same thoroughfares, with aching limbs, 
 and breaking hearts and tearful eyes; 
 , for one-half the world must toil and 
 at, and groan, that the other half 
 . thrive and rejoice. The London 
 ets are thronged with hoary heads 
 to the grave and craving 
 charity to pay their way, and with tiny 
 t just pattering into life, that are 
 already learning to keep time to the beg- 
 gar's voice. I wonder if i shall ever 
 get hardened to the piteous tales that 
 tie one's ears at every step, and the 
 riifirged types of suffering that make 
 one's eyes wet and one's heart sick." 
 
 But it was when her sympathies were 
 aroused and her heart ached for others' 
 misfortunes that her pen most truly re- 
 vealed the tenderness of her heart. 
 
 This is what she writes after a visit 
 to an orphan asylum : 
 
 "To me there ia something heart-rend- 
 ing in the sight of a motherless child. 
 Like some lone bark, tossed by mighty 
 billows, I tremble for it. My heart yearns 
 for it, and my hand involuntarily 
 stretches out to protect it. I want to 
 shelter it in my own arms, cradle it on 
 my own breast, comfort it all my life ; 
 and yet, as I sat there among those 
 pooi little orphans, with the tears roll- 
 ing uown my cheek, I seemed to forget 
 them all in one, or rather to concen- 
 trate the misery of all in that one 
 A whom I longed to secure from sorrow 
 i and misfortune. I drew the little crea- 
 " ture to my side, caught her in my arms, 
 and kissed her time and time again." ( 
 
 Her eloquent appeals through the 1 
 
 press for aid to go in search of the ill- 
 
 starred Sir John Franklin were highly 
 
 appreciated by Moses Grinnell, whose 
 
 generosity fitted out the Arctic expedi- 
 
 tion, and BO highly did he esteem the 
 
 .brilliant author that he jra.'e a dinner 
 
 or honor in New York. The eutcr- 
 
 jiuent was given on Bond street, in 
 
 i i.he citv of Naw York, in tha ya*r 
 
 A distinguished con 
 
 to meet her, amor 
 
 Kent Kane, who published " 
 
 tive of the Expedition in seaj 
 
 John Franklin." 
 
 She received, also, from Lady Prank- 
 lin herself a letter in which i-l.e ex- 
 pressed her deep sense of grati cude. 
 
 Mrs. Billings' first husband was Ca 
 Jas. F. Armstrong, a distingtu- 
 cer of the U. S. N., and after his d> 
 she was married to Judge Billings, of 
 ' New Orleans. 
 
 Lifted above the sordidTcare^s of life, 
 with perfect congeniality of thought 
 and taste, their married life was ideally 
 happy. Of it Judge Billi n 
 
 " She reveled in the bloom 
 and the unchecked verdi) 
 and plants in our Southern ho 
 clear, mellow ekics, in the ai 
 character and manner which is f o 
 not only in the French-speaking portion 
 of the citizens of IS ew Orleans, but to 
 some extent among all, in the amuse- 
 ments which are well nigh perpetual, 
 in the hospitalities extended to famous 
 people from abroad and in her elegant 
 intercourse, in which her amiable, 
 warm-hearted nature delighted, with 
 those true and tried New Orleans 
 friends, whose admiration for her was 
 shown by the most thoughtful, unre- 
 mitting Kindness. 
 
 "Self-denying, self-forgetting, in sick- 
 ness and health she followed me with 
 unslumbering oare, and upward tend- 
 ing suggestions like tb at of the minis- 
 tering spirits sent of 
 
 "Our enjoyment had the mellowness 
 of the midday of liie with the unabated 
 freshness of its nion 
 in idyllic leisu: 
 cupatiou and 
 com;' 
 luxury ai 
 poverty, or even 
 was in our houses c 
 
 comfort, for it was above aad beyond 
 these accidents." 
 
 Not Beatrice, nor Laura, nor Charlotte 
 has been more tenderly immortalized. 
 
 But across the brightness of this day 
 the shadowof death fell, and not all that 
 affection could suggest or science could 
 do could stay the dread moment when 
 the idolized wife and beloved friend 
 must go into that unknown laud where 
 her sublime faith saw nothing to fear- 
 only rest from suffering and the eternal 
 love of her Father and her God. 
 
 Such is tne story of the life, grand 
 in its simplicity, sincerity, self-abnega- 
 tion and high, unbending purpose of 
 Emily Sanford Billings as .her hus- 
 band tells it, as only he could tell it, 
 who knew her best and loved her most 
 truly. Told with the truest skill and 
 most consummate art, in that it makes 
 the reader tho sharer of his joy and 
 sorrow "Who had one wife and who 
 clave unto her." 
 
 The volume also is a marvel of the 
 printer's art. The binding is rich and 
 elegant, and the line engravings done 
 by Kingsley, the famous artiSt of the 
 Century, who is a boyhood friend of 
 Judge Billings, are examples of the 
 artist's very best work. There is a soft- 
 ness, a breadth and a -tenderness of feel- 
 ing in the pictures that betray a master 
 hand. 
 
 The book is issued from the famous 
 De Vinne press, and is printed on soft, 
 thick paper, and the unconven- 
 tional designs on both covers show 
 much artistic taste and perception. 
 On the rich dark cover on one side, 
 beneath the name, Emily Sanford Bil- 
 lings, is a silver scroll, on which is en- 
 graved a noble sentiment from one of 
 her letters, while on the other is a 
 lovely impression of a palm which was 
 taken, from her own New Havon home 
 as a model for the design, as were also
 
 the lily and foret-me-n5teS*EIca 
 ^inscription on the page opposite the 
 ait of her beautiful face 
 
 forms tne fitting frontispiec. 
 wonderfully exquisite volume, is from a 
 Photograph by H.B. Hall. Jr. So true 
 BO beautiful, so satisfying and satisfied! 
 ^V hat a boon to all who truly loved her 
 have her own face so truthfully re^ 
 produced, with her fi oul Bo clearly 
 shining through it. 
 
 , The book is not for sale, but with 
 lavish generosity Judge Billings has 
 enriched his friends with the gift of thi 
 memoir of a beautiful life. One f eela it 
 a pity that the book cannot have a 
 wider circulation even than this. The 
 author has in the compUed and original 
 matter given a guidance to every wo 
 man, and though he may feel his sor- 
 row too sacred for strange eyes to rest 
 upon, he should give to the world at 
 large at least an epitome of the beauti- 
 ful traits he has sketched so graph 
 ically, that young girls may be taught 
 to what heights womanhood may a 
 tarn. J ** 
 
 Remarks by Judge E. C. Billing*. 
 
 LPAILY PICAYUNE- 
 
 - 

 
 EMILY SANFORD BILLINGS
 
 /^i^i
 
 DEDICATION 
 
 TO MY SWEET MOTHER, 
 
 HEPSEY DICKINSON BILLINGS, 
 
 I dedicate this Sketch, with the hope that, even by a tie so 
 frail and perishable as words of mine, may be linked the 
 memory of her, who first revealed to me the sacredness in 
 woman's character, with that of her who, in all the relations 
 of life, .so conspicuously and endearingly illustrated that sanc- 
 tity ; that these two beings who had, as typical mother and 
 wife, successively stood by my side, like angels, inciting to all 
 that was good and repelling all that was bad, and who first 
 
 <M 
 
 met as seraphs in Heaven, might each occupy her own fitting 
 CM relations to the worth herein recorded, the one having pre- 
 f| pared me by the hints and suggestions from the depths of 
 her own serene and loving nature, to regard as possible, and 
 appreciate, when found, the more broadly unfolded and more 
 g brilliantly beautified excellencies of the other. Thus may 
 ^ there be a remembered association between her who fore- 
 shadowed and prefigured and her who also attained to and 
 embodied in a shining life, such unworldliness, such affinity 
 with goodness, such steadfastness for the right, and such 
 purposes born of Heaven. 
 
 461874
 
 PREFACE 
 
 This sketch was undertaken for several reasons. 
 
 Upon the death of the fondly loved, there abides for 
 the survivor an everywhere-diffused, ever-present sense of 
 loss, of the oppression of pain and solitude, a void co-ex- 
 tensive with mental associations, almost an absence of 
 what made existence personal. 
 
 Slowly, sometimes not till life on earth becomes nearly 
 all a retrospect, its chastening all wrought into char- 
 after, comes to the mourner from out the "ashes" of 
 the grave the promised "beauty" comes that ideal 
 presence of our cherished dead which to the Spiritual 
 Senses brings something of the look and fellowship, the 
 high and brave encouragement, the restfulness, the assuage- 
 ment, and the beckoning upward of their living selves. 
 
 " The proSpecl and horizon gone," every landscape is 
 dreary, every shore barren. Our being, which yesterday 
 was full of vigor and crowned with verdure, is to-day 
 withered as if smitten by the kitting frost ; so that the 
 utterly bereaved seems to be separated, far away, from
 
 8 Preface. 
 
 his own life. The connection between the soul and interest 
 in external objefts is paralysed. 
 
 "As deep bos thus called unto deep," "His waves and 
 billows going over me," every phase and incident of the 
 life berein outlined has won me to its contemplation, as, 
 in some sense, to a communion with that vanished life. 
 The labor of the sketch, therefore, has afforded some little 
 relief amid the distraction of grief and the desolation of 
 loneliness. 
 
 Also have I felt that the events of a life which had 
 been one high, unbending resolve to be and to do what 
 was pure and good and noble, wherein bad been com- 
 bined an intellect of such comprehensiveness, equipoise, and 
 brilliancy with a disposition so sweet and joyous and lov- 
 ing and faithful, wherein had been reflected such love of 
 justness and such generosity, and wherein acquirements 
 bad been gained with such sincerity and worn so unos- 
 tentatiously, a life that bad engaged the interest and 
 won tbe affeclion of so many gifted people, should, along 
 with her letters, so rich in thought, so elevated in senti- 
 ment, and so splendid in diftion, with suitable group- 
 ing, have commemoration and permanence, which arrange- 
 ment in a published volume could alone secure. 
 
 I knew, too, that her friends would find solace, and all 
 would derive encouragement, in reading of tbe grace and 
 sweetness with which she continued to invest life, as with 
 a garment, under greatest trials, to tbe very last ; of tbe
 
 Preface. 9 
 
 heroism with which she encountered dangers, the resigna- 
 tion with which she endured pain, and the faith with 
 which she triumphed in death. 
 
 Since a noble life transcends all other sources of hitman 
 power for good, it has been my wish that, through faithful 
 and appreciative narrative, the life of Emily Sanford may, 
 with all its high consecration and pure affiliations, still 
 flow on, a perpetual stream of beneficent influences 
 unceasingly reflecting tribute to the dead and incentive 
 to the living. 
 
 As to the manner in which this purpose has been executed, 
 provided only it shall have been accomplished and the 
 record shall fittingly present the exquisite beauty and rare 
 virtues of the life committed to it, I have a single ambi- 
 tion, that it may in all respects be exactly such as her 
 taste would approve. Not exactly will the asperity of 
 criticism be softened, but rather the Spirit of criticism 
 will withdraw itself, where what has been written has been 
 the spontaneous, well-nigh involuntary product of sorrow, 
 born of a fullness of love between the subject and writer, 
 which made them the whole world to each other, and 
 makes what used to seem his worth towards her now to 
 seem to need forgiveness. 
 
 EDWARD C. BILLINGS. 
 
 New Orleans, April 2)d, 1886.
 
 A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 
 
 EMILY SANFORD BILLINGS 
 
 I 
 
 Early Life and Home Associations. 
 
 EMILY SANFORD was born on the 23d 
 day of April, 1830. She was the youngest 
 of eight children, five sons and three daughters. 
 One of her brothers, Henry, who gave, perhaps, 
 most brilliant promise of all this talented family, 
 died when about to graduate in the Law School 
 at Yale College. Another brother, Alfred, being 
 possessed of an unconquerable passion for the
 
 12 Emily Sanford Billings. 
 
 sea, started on a sailing vessel for a voyage round 
 the world. The vessel was never heard from. It 
 was a fact, I have heard her state, that her 
 mother, down to the time of her death, though 
 so many years had elapsed since her son had 
 gone forth, would start with a strange expect- 
 ancy like that feeling, half expectation, half 
 despair, with which we still listen for the foot- 
 steps of those known to be dead whenever 
 she saw approaching her, on the street, any one 
 clad in the garb of a sailor, hoping without any 
 reason, and against reason, that she might dis- 
 cern in him traces of her handsome, unreturning 
 boy. How long and how fervently hope of his 
 reappearance was cherished by the family is 
 beautifully evidenced by the will of her father, 
 Hervey Sanford, who for nearly thirty years, and 
 down to the year 1860, continued in his will and 
 its codicils ample provisions for this long-absent 
 son whom the sea never brought back. 
 
 Though I never personally knew her parents, 
 I can readily describe her father. The clear feat- 
 ures of his character are before my mind like the 
 well-defined parts of an old line-engraving. He
 
 Her Father. 13 
 
 was born of a family which, every Sabbath, from 
 end to end of that long dining-room in Bethany, 
 extended a bountifully supplied table, received 
 the whole body of worshipers, from far and 
 near, congregated for worship in the closely 
 adjoining church, and entertained them with 
 the simplicity and open-handed hospitality of 
 the old English barons. He had the great 
 merits of self-made men. What if he had some 
 of their faults? He was possibly severe in his 
 views of family government. Perhaps he sym- 
 pathized not enough with pastime and recrea- 
 tion. But his love for his family was intense, 
 sleepless, ever wise. He educated them in the 
 best seminaries in the land. He taught them 
 methods, the clearest and most precise, and 
 purposes which led to honor and distinction. 
 He acquired and bequeathed to them a for- 
 tune which has made his children and their chil- 
 dren affluent ; and along with this he handed 
 down to them a name that was a synonym 
 of integrity, and an example which, though it 
 lacked, possibly, sentimentality, was filled with 
 the heroic determination to subordinate wishes
 
 14 Emily Sanford Billings. 
 
 to judgment and the indulgences of to-day to 
 provision for to-morrow. 
 
 I have difficulty in attempting a delineation 
 of her mother. There has been such unanimity 
 of so many voices attesting her high endow- 
 ments as woman and mother; I entered so 
 fully into the depth and tenderness of the feel- 
 ing which dwelt in her who told me most of 
 that mother ; there was such a softening of 
 the voice and often such suffusion of the eye 
 accompanying her descriptions and allusions, that 
 I have come to contemplate that mother as a 
 character of such rounded fullness of rarest 
 qualities that I fear lest I may fail to repro- 
 duce with completeness its exquisite symmetry 
 and beauty. 
 
 She had a superior intellect, had been educated 
 by an exalted mother; she was a good observer, 
 was fond of books, was systematic in her ways 
 of thought and life, was quick to perceive and 
 keen to enjoy humor. The gentleness even of 
 mothers was in her softened. Her endowments 
 were all beautified by this, that the great law 
 of her being was to love. Partly by inherit-
 
 Her Mother. 15 
 
 ance, and partly by her own researches, while 
 she presided with such dignity over her own 
 house, she collected a system of ideas upon house- 
 wifery that gave it the elegance and attractive- 
 ness of one of the fine arts. Retaining in advanced 
 age all her love of nature, when almost three- 
 score and ten years old, she journeyed with as 
 little weariness and as much amusement as do 
 the young. At the age of seventy, sudden emo- 
 tion caused the ruddy blush to mantle her cheek 
 through her transparent skin, smooth as that of 
 childhood, and all the delights of life brought 
 to her unwearied heart, joy, in freshness like that 
 of youth. She and this youngest daughter ! 
 How shall I find words to give, even in outline, 
 the large affection that bound them together ? 
 The mother enveloped the daughter in a love 
 that was like a shining atmosphere. The 
 daughter, walking in its glad radiance, ren- 
 dered back an homage of heart and life that 
 was akin to a consecration. 
 
 There was another member of this family, 
 the maternal grandmother, Mrs. Lyman, known 
 in those days of plain, expressive names as
 
 1 6 Emily Sanford Billings. 
 
 Polly Lyman, who was a person of such facul- 
 ties and tastes that she naturally exercised a 
 controlling influence, even in a family so intel- 
 lectual and refined as those who knew the 
 family of Hervey Sanford intimately felt it to 
 be. Her love of flowers, like her enthusiasm 
 in cultivating all that was high in aim and 
 pure in thought, was as vigorous in age as in 
 youth. Her wisdom embodied in many trite 
 sayings, her learning in the direction of Biog- 
 raphy and History, her character (meaning by 
 that her decided qualities of heart and brain), are 
 handed down with admiration, not alone in Mr. 
 Sanford's family, but also among the children's 
 children of the circle in which she exerted so 
 great an influence. 
 
 I add a pen-and-ink picture of Mrs. Lyman 
 from an article published in 1870 in The New 
 Haven Palladium, entitled "Temple Street, 
 Forty Years Ago." The writer says : 
 
 " Mrs. Sanford's mother, Mrs. Lyman, lived 
 with them, and her specialty was a fondness 
 for flowers, which she cultivated herself in their 
 large garden with great success. I can see
 
 Her Maternal Grandmother. 17 
 
 her now, scissors in hand to cut flowers for a 
 friend, stopping here and there to pull an 
 interloping weed, or break off a dead leaf, her 
 face lighting up to give pleasure, by a gift 
 much rarer then than now. Her fondness for 
 flowers and books was greatly in advance of 
 her time. 
 
 " She was a great reader, and spent more 
 money for books than, I'll venture to say, did 
 many of her more carefully educated and younger 
 neighbors. Books for mere reading were scarce 
 and a luxury, and buying many was considered 
 an extravagance." 
 
 In this family, at what then was known as 
 144 Temple street, where is most full the ver- 
 dure and most striking the Gothic arch of the 
 elms planted by Mr. Hillhouse, which have given 
 to New Haven such an unchallenged name for 
 shade and beauty, were passed the childhood and 
 early youth of Emily Sanford. Here she learned 
 to walk without first creeping. Here her infant 
 lips uttered that first sentence, which she often 
 gleefully recited, and which showed her char- 
 acteristic independence, made up of so much
 
 1 8 Emily Sanford Billings. 
 
 sweetness, so much inflexibility, because of the 
 wholeness, the unreservedness of her convictions. 
 Here she commenced life with that fervent love 
 for her mother which ever continued to be stim- 
 ulus and restraint from girlhood, when, no matter 
 how absorbing the visit or the sport, the sound 
 of the clock, reminding her of her mother's in- 
 junction, always hurried her home, down to that 
 long vigil, by day and by night, beside that dying 
 mother's bed, when the passing away of the mother 
 was followed by a swoon, like that of death, of 
 the exhausted daughter. 
 
 Here she loved all her brothers and sisters 
 with warm devotion. Here she loved her 
 brother " Charlie," who was afterwards emi- 
 nent at the New York bar, and one of the 
 judges of the Superior Court of the City of 
 New York. These two, the youngest of the 
 family, drawn together in youth by a similarity 
 of tastes and a unity of ideal in life, as man 
 and woman taking their separate parts in the 
 world, never lost the pure affection which had 
 so beautifully characterized them as boy and 
 girl. As a little boy, he suspended his ball-
 
 Her Brother "Charlie" 19 
 
 playing the moment his little sister expressed 
 a wish to go home, gallantly escorted her to 
 and from school, and lovingly helped her over 
 the little pools of water left by the passing 
 showers. As a man, pressed by the cares and 
 labors of his exhaustive professional life, with 
 the same alacrity he interrupted his business 
 to welcome her or to accompany her wherever 
 her interests or wishes called her to go. Their 
 strikingly similar features were scarcely more 
 alike than were their characters. How was 
 her great love for him shown by the pride 
 and pleasure with which she lingered upon even 
 his name as she pronounced it ! With what care 
 did she cherish before his death, and with what 
 reverence did she treasure afterwards, his boy- 
 ish birthday gift, his miniature painted on ivory, 
 set in a locket and resting on a tiny easel ! 
 Well might she have clung to it with such 
 fond admiration ! There was " such wondrous 
 purpose in his eyes " as they looked forth from 
 beneath that broad brow in that seraphic pict- 
 ure ! This portrait, made when he was fourteen 
 years old, surpasses, in beauty of lineament as 
 
 3
 
 2O Emily Sanford Billings. 
 
 it does in the evidence of lofty character, in 
 spiritual expression, those pictures of the youth- 
 ful Lord Byron which are regarded as types of 
 beauty. 
 
 Generous, unforgetting brother, refined, un- 
 worldly man, who shrank from low and vulgar 
 thoughts as from crimes ; who climbed to a sum- 
 mit as an advocate and counselor, and who, though 
 life was ended amidst prolonged sickness and at 
 midday, crowned that life with a judicial fame even 
 then resplendent ! What wonder that such a sister 
 grieved at the death of such a brother as though a 
 part of her own life had expired. 
 
 Says a gifted woman who, like her, was born 
 beneath the Temple street elms, and was the inti- 
 mate friend of her mother and who knew the 
 interior of the family well : " She was the pet 
 of the household, but her sweet nature carried 
 her through childhood and youth without in- 
 ducing the selfishness or willfulness usually the 
 result of such indulgence. 
 
 " She was an uncommon child, wide awake 
 and playful, but with a directness and earnest- 
 ness rarely seen so early in life.
 
 Her Earnest Childhood. 21 
 
 " When a little girl, her mother sent her to her 
 father's store for something for which she was in 
 a hurry. The clerk proposed to send it. No, she 
 would carry it. ' But/ said he, ' for a little lady to 
 take such a package is not respectable.' ' Give it 
 to me,' she exclaimed, 'and I will make it respect- 
 able,' and carried it off. 
 
 " Whatever she thought right and proper she 
 would do, and no mere conventionality or adverse 
 judgment could induce her to step out of the 
 path which, according to her conviction, right 
 and duty marked out for her." 
 
 II 
 
 At Mount Holyoke Seminary. 
 
 WHEN sixteen years of age she went to 
 Mount Holyoke Seminary at South Had- 
 ley, Massachusetts. 
 
 During our married life I accompanied her 
 upon the occasion of her revisiting that institu- 
 tion. Her account there and on the way, giv-
 
 22 Emily Sanford Billings. 
 
 ing her hopes and efforts within those walls, 
 which during her student life had been unadorned, 
 but then inclosed much luxury, was full of brill- 
 iant anecdote and melting reminiscence, and dis- 
 closed the record of one who saw so exclusively 
 the good, the beautiful, and the true, that it was 
 like the lifting of the veil from the noblest of lives 
 by a disembodied soul. 
 
 As showing the earnestness and elevation of 
 her purposes during her school days, I insert 
 extracts from a letter written by her in 1853 
 to her cousin, Ellen Hetzel, then a student at 
 the seminary, for which I am indebted to the 
 great kindness of Mrs. Frances L. (Kent) Knowl- 
 ton, who was permitted to take a copy, who pre- 
 served it all these years, and who writes that 
 "it had exercised a great formative influence 
 upon her character, and, in her opinion, should 
 be read to every class of young ladies at the 
 seminary" : 
 
 " Thank you for the introduction you have given 
 me to your new friends. . . . Tell me what makes 
 them your friends ; it is a sweet study that of
 
 " Self -Respect Better than Renown" 23 
 
 learning what makes other hearts congenial to 
 our own. You fear you have disappointed Miss G. 
 Do not stop to repent it, do not even stay to 
 decide if the fact be really such, but be now what 
 she did expect of you. It is never too late. Begin 
 now to be too generous to see the faults of others, 
 too noble to proclaim them. At school one only 
 has to deserve approbation, and the winning it 
 is sure. 
 
 " To command respect, one has but to mas- 
 ter every lesson thoroughly, thus proving one's 
 natural abilities ; and to win love, one need only 
 be worthy of it, as obliging, self-forgetting people 
 ever are. 
 
 " The noble dignify employments be they 
 ever so mean, but the insignificant must derive 
 all their dignity from their employments. I 
 respect myself so much when I have accom- 
 plished some task which others would shrink 
 from as too far below them; and self-respect is 
 more valuable than even renown, for it is never 
 falsely won. It is easy to deceive others, but 
 very difficult to deceive one's self."
 
 24 Emily Sanford Billings. 
 
 Here she became much loved by that mag- 
 nificently endowed woman, Mary Lyon. Here 
 she formed a friendship for another teacher, 
 hardly less talented, which blossomed like a 
 perennial rose-tree throughout her life. Here 
 she easily won the respect and attachment of 
 classmates and fellow-pupils to which she and 
 they ever clung with a tenacity rarely beheld. 
 Between herself and one of these fellow-pupils 
 the attachment then formed became and con- 
 tinued through life like that between sisters, 
 beautifying the existence of each while she was 
 in health, and hallowing by the tenderness of 
 its mutual expression the moments among her 
 latest on earth. Writing since her death, this 
 fellow-pupil says : " In early life I gave to 
 Emmie a large share of affection which grew 
 with my growth and strengthened with my 
 strength. Her appreciation of every loving word 
 and thought made me, when I was not with 
 her, look forward to her coming North with 
 impatience." 
 
 There was a third friend whose childhood 
 home had been so near to hers that from win-
 
 Love of Miss Lyon and Fellow- Pupils. 25 
 
 dow to window they could almost join hands ; 
 whose heart was ever as near to hers as had been 
 home to home ; whose gentle voice and light 
 step were ever music to her ear, and whose en- 
 deared presence had brought joy or comfort in 
 thousands of life's varied experiences. These 
 three friends ! what a beautiful picture did they 
 make in her overflowing eyes, and afterwards, in 
 her faithful memory, as they stood, gathered to 
 utter their annual sweet farewell, grouped upon 
 the door-step of the old Temple street house, with 
 the autumn winds swaying and murmuring in the 
 overhanging elms, playfully vieing with each 
 other for her last salutation, and finally breathing 
 their triple benediction as she drove away to com- 
 mence her southward journey ! 
 
 Another kindred spirit, an uninterruptedly and 
 fondly loved and loving schoolmate at the sem- 
 inary, one of whose letters, written from Dresden, 
 contained the last written words of affection 
 received by her on earth, writes since her death : 
 " There is no one outside my immediate family 
 whose death could have so overcome me as 
 does Emily's. The world seems darker and
 
 26 Emily Sanford Billings. 
 
 poorer for her loss, and I can look forward joy- 
 fully to the time when I, too, may lay my burden 
 down and go to her in some of the many man- 
 sions prepared for the ransomed ones." 
 
 Here at the seminary, too, she felt the influ- 
 ence of divine grace, and enjoyed vivid religious 
 experiences. The severe winters in that latitude 
 told upon her physical organization and caused 
 an illness which somewhat interrupted her prog- 
 ress in her studies ; but she left the seminary, 
 carrying with her acquisitions in her knowledge 
 which her quick perception, energy, and industry 
 rendered unusually extended, with the stimulus 
 and suggestions which contact with such an order 
 of minds as were teachers in that school of learn- 
 ing must give, and with her affections enriched 
 by friendships, the delightful intimacies of which 
 death alone interrupted.
 
 On the Continent. 27 
 
 III 
 
 Travel Abroad. 
 
 IN 1851 she went abroad with her sister Catha- 
 rine, Mrs. Bliss, and her brother-in-law, 
 George Bliss. The circumstance of her going 
 and being with Mr. and Mrs. Bliss while she was 
 in Great Britain, aided her much in the harvest of 
 ideas which she gathered abroad. For they at that 
 time lived in England, and thus she saw, through 
 them and their friends, English life and English 
 homes ; and, too, they were of such active minds 
 and discriminating judgments as to aid vastly a 
 younger traveler capacitated and eager to learn. 
 But her observations upon the Continent, as 
 well as in England, must have been of a thought- 
 ful and thorough character, for she had derived 
 such rare and complete knowledge as enabled her 
 to give, in after years, not alone an account of 
 meritorious works of art and memorable beauties 
 of scenery, but to combine and blend all with 
 
 4
 
 28 Emily Sanford Billings. 
 
 great events of history, and, what is far more 
 unusual and a far better test of talent in the voy- 
 ager, to give you in a word an estimate of the 
 various peoples and to explain their national and 
 local traits. Of all those who have sojourned 
 abroad, from whom I have been privileged to 
 derive ideas freely through daily conversation, I 
 think her conceptions and inferences were the 
 most vividly clear, most thoroughly founded, and 
 most valuable in their application to daily living. 
 
 As showing the child-likeness of her nature and 
 her deep love for friends at home, I make an ex- 
 tract from a letter written by her, when in Paris, 
 to the teacher-friend whom she had so learned 
 to love and who had so learned to love her at 
 the Mount Holyoke Seminary. She writes: "I 
 would gladly relinquish all this for one quiet hour 
 with you. It would be no sacrifice to me, love, to 
 exchange the allurements of this beguiling metrop- 
 olis for your quiet home." 
 
 I insert extracts from one of her published let- 
 ters written from London upon 
 
 THE TOWER, THE ABBEY, THE PALACES, AND 
 HYDE PARK, IN LONDON,
 
 Westminster Abbey. 29 
 
 IV 
 
 Her Letters. 
 THE ABBEY AND THE TOWER. 
 
 " T)UT St. Paul's had little interest for me com- 
 JLJ pared with that which Westminster Abbey 
 inspired. If you would learn life's meaning or 
 death's reality ; if you would know the emptiness 
 of fashion, gold, and fame, or realize the worth 
 of time, you should visit Westminster Abbey, 
 where the head that schemed and toiled for power, 
 the form before which nations bowed, the heart 
 that bled for fame, and the tawdry leader of a 
 butterfly chase, lie paralyzed in death. 
 
 " The world seems but a petty stage when one 
 looks upon its famous actors stripped of their 
 theatrical accoutrements, and, wearied with the 
 toil of their exciting parts, sleeping the same 
 untroubled sleep the tyrant and the victim 
 power and weakness riches and poverty side 
 by side.
 
 3O Emily Sanford Billings. 
 
 " How empty seem life's glittering baubles 
 when one sees the robe of state replaced by the 
 winding-sheet ; how vain its wide distinctions 
 when the mightiest monarch, like his humblest 
 subject, yields to the same King, Death ; how 
 childish seem the heart's strongest passions, when 
 one thinks of the vast multitude who loved and 
 hated gloried and despaired sorrowed and 
 rejoiced who suffered and enjoyed, centuries 
 ago, as we are doing now ! Ambition's frenzied 
 dream, the mind's electric flashes, love's delirious 
 happiness, will soon be to us what they have long 
 been to them. 
 
 " I have heard many a sermon from the text, 
 'Vanity of Vanities, all is "vanity' but it was not 
 until I trod these antique aisles that its reality 
 came over me with all the force of actual truth, 
 and sent me forth into the world again with a 
 wiser but a sadder heart." 
 
 THE TOWER. 
 
 "You know that at school my favorite study 
 was history ; but I never read such thrilling pages
 
 The Tower of London. 3 1 
 
 of it in any book as one finds written all over the 
 walls of yonder old gray tower. You ask me to 
 tell you of Castles, Palaces, and Monuments ; and 
 there all the three are comprised in one ; for surely 
 no monument could be more teeming with records 
 of the past than this very tower so famous as the 
 palace, the fortress, and the prison of by-gone years. 
 It is interesting to the artist for its picturesque 
 situation on the banks of the Thames ; to the anti- 
 quary, as a relic of William the Conqueror's time ; 
 and, more than all, to the historian, as the scene 
 of those national dramas whose influence on the 
 country and its people is even now discernible. 
 
 " The stone stairs, beneath which were buried 
 the bodies of the infant princes, were all I saw of 
 Richard's bloody tragedy ; and the heading-block 
 and axe that formed the closing scene of Essex's 
 life are now the only traces left of the comedy of 
 vanity performed by the ruffled queen who played 
 her cards so well, till hearts were trumps. One 
 hears of things like these with that kind of interest 
 we give to romance spun from fancy's web ; but 
 it is with a different feeling than one looks upon 
 the very field where the battle of life was fought.
 
 32 Emily Sanford Billings. 
 
 "I have seemed to read a living history since 
 the day I sat in Sir Walter Raleigh's dungeon, 
 and trod the prison floor of Anne Boleyn, Mary 
 Stuart, and the Lady Jane Grey. The faded relics 
 of former grandeur tell their stories of the quondam 
 palace ; the moat around the buildings marks the 
 fortress ; and the warders, dressed in the costume 
 they wore in the Elizabethan age, remind the 
 visitor of the old tower's prison days. 
 
 " Every stranger is led through sundry long, 
 dark, narrow passages into a tiny closet, occupied 
 by a wizened crone, the impersonation of one's 
 fancy picture of the Witch of Endor. She is hab- 
 ited in a blue petticoat and a stiffly starched short 
 gown, and hanging from her waist is the ponder- 
 ous key to the iron-bound door that opens upon 
 the regalia. Here, one is forcibly reminded of 
 the old aphorism about ' riches taking to them- 
 selves wings,' by the iron cage which incloses the 
 royal paraphernalia, and by the heavy chains that 
 attach each article to its place. Thereby hangs 
 an omen of the connection between the palace and 
 the prison. The jargon of the old woman, who 
 strove to teach us that those four walls comprised
 
 The Royal Palaces of London. 33 
 
 ' all the kingdoms of the world, and she their 
 sovereign was,' wearied me ; and the gold and 
 jewels seemed of far less worth than the lives that 
 had been pawned for them. So I quickly turned 
 away from the Crown beneath which so many heads 
 had ached, and the scepter that bloody hands had 
 swayed, to breathe a freer air ; for the atmosphere 
 of those prison walls oppressed my heart with the 
 great truths that since the morning had been sealed 
 thereon. But I shall spend another day at the 
 Tower before we leave London, for well I know 
 that it teaches lessons more wise, truths more 
 profound, than all the books man's pen ever 
 wrote." 
 
 THE PALACES OF LONDON. 
 
 " The present palaces of London rather dis- 
 appoint my expectations as to outward grandeur, 
 but, within, nothing can exceed their luxurious 
 elegance. Kensington Palace, where the child- 
 hood of Queen Victoria was spent, is extremely 
 irregular in structure ; and St. James's, where she 
 still holds her levees, appears more like a huge 
 pile of bricks than a royal dwelling-place ; but
 
 34 Emily Sanford Billings. 
 
 within its portals there are saloons of immense 
 size, magnificently decorated. Buckingham Pal- 
 ace forms the winter home of the Royal Family ; 
 but even that would be quite unpretending, if it 
 were not for the charm of a situation in Hyde 
 Park. It has little merit in an architectural point 
 of view, for it is only a combination of many dif- 
 ferent designs that from time to time have re- 
 modeled and enlarged without improving its 
 appearance, and left at last the Buckingham 
 House of George the Third's reign, modernized." 
 
 HYDE PARK. 
 
 " Far away to the westward of the vast and 
 crowded metropolis, stretches the three hundred 
 and fifty acres of open ground known as Hyde 
 Park, beautifully diversified with grassy hillocks, 
 clover-grown knolls, and tiny moss-lined valleys. 
 Through it flow the clear waters of the Serpen- 
 tine, reflecting flowery banks and the leafy 
 branches of tall trees that rock the nests of sum- 
 mer birds whose thrilling melodies the very beg- 
 gars are rich enough to buy.
 
 Hyde Park. 35 
 
 "I never saw anything half so perfect as this 
 lovely picture of the country, spread out in the 
 very heart of a great city, to refresh with equal 
 benefit careworn inhabitants of narrow, thickly 
 crowded alleys, and the sicklier cheeks of the more 
 crowded drawing-room occupants. It gives a 
 charming feature to a city landscape, especially in 
 the eye of one who comes from a land where the 
 feverish eagerness to turn everything into gold is 
 always drowning the voice of Nature in the noisy 
 din of business where trees are only beautiful 
 for the cords of wood they will make, and pleas- 
 ure grounds are eye-sores because they 'might 
 have been sold for three hundred pence,' and 
 turned to mechanical uses ! 
 
 "You should see Hyde Park of a Sunday, to 
 get an idea of London's population and London's 
 wealth. You would think it were some gala day, 
 as your eye wandered over the motley throng of 
 showily dressed people who are then sure to fill 
 this favorite resort. It seems like a triumphal 
 procession the long line of stylish-looking 
 equipages that extends from one end to the other 
 of those immense grounds. There are majestic 
 5
 
 36 Emily Sanford Billings. 
 
 cavaliers beside splendid carriages filled with 
 beautiful women in costly robes decorated 
 with golden crests, and drawn by superb horses 
 guided by coachmen in powdered wigs and gay 
 liveries. The footpaths, too, are thronged with 
 people from a humbler walk of life people in 
 their holiday dresses and their holiday smiles ! 
 The effect is so imposing, that if you were to see 
 only the kaleidoscope views of life that one gets 
 in Hyde Park of a Sunday afternoon, you would 
 take it for an Elysium of beauty and pleasure, 
 rather than the thing of toil and care and sorrow 
 that it is. But the every-day side of the picture 
 would quickly break the spell. All the live-long 
 week, misery and want and wretchedness are toil- 
 ing in the self- same thoroughfares, with aching 
 limbs and breaking hearts and tearful eyes ; for 
 one-half the world must toil and sweat and groan, 
 that the other half may thrive and rejoice. The 
 London streets are thronged with hoary heads 
 tottering to the grave and craving charity to pay 
 their way, and with tiny feet just pattering into 
 life, that are already learning to keep time to the 
 beggar's voice. I wonder if I shall ever get hard-
 
 Woman's Mission. 37 
 
 ened to the piteous tales that startle one's ears at 
 every step, and the ragged types of suffering that 
 make one's eyes wet and one's heart sick." 
 
 After her return from Europe, cultured as she 
 was by her studies at the schools, by much travel 
 and by social intercourse with highly educated 
 people, she seems to have loved to write. 
 
 I insert an extract from one of her published 
 letters, written in 1855, on the "Mission of 
 Woman," another from the same letter telling of 
 the zest with which she had enjoyed a summer 
 in "The West," and another extract from some 
 published thoughts of hers on " The Closing 
 Year." 
 
 WOMAN'S MISSION. 
 
 " To raise the fallen ; to relieve the oppressed ; 
 to comfort the sorrowing ; to watch over the sick ; 
 to be strength to the weary, help to the infirm, 
 and light to the blind this is woman's sphere ; 
 and if her influence ever extend to political affairs, 
 it is an influence as unseen as that with which 
 Spring carpets the fields and freshens the trees 
 
 461874
 
 38 Emily Sanford Billings. 
 
 i 
 
 such an influence as flowers have on poetry, as air 
 has on music, as light has on life." 
 
 A HAPPY SUMMER IN THE WEST. 
 
 " But I am wandering from the luxuriance of 
 life to its desolation. I began to tell you how 
 much more beautiful has been this summer than 
 any other summer I ever knew. Perhaps the 
 change of climate has strengthened my nerves 
 and brightened my vision ; or, perhaps, being 
 nearer sundown gives everything a softer radi- 
 ance ; at all events, I certainly do see things in a 
 better light. I have looked at life through the 
 laughing eyes of childhood and through the clearer 
 eyes of youth, but it never before looked such a 
 glad, bright, glorious thing. I have drank it from 
 mountain rills and from city fountains, but it never 
 seemed a luxury till now. 
 
 " There has been always a tone of sadness in my 
 song that told of a cold and hollow, a blighting, 
 bitter world ; but of late the tune has changed. 
 ' Oh World, with all thy faults I love thee still ! ' 
 
 " In other years I could have died unmurmur
 
 The Closing Year. 39 
 
 ingly ; now, earth seems to obeautiful to leave, and 
 every day I pray, 'oh let me live.' This season 
 has been to me a volume of beautiful pictures, and 
 upon each successively I have gazed with ever- 
 new delight. I shall see the last leaf of Western 
 scenery turn with inexpressible regret." 
 
 THE CLOSING YEAR. 
 
 " I remember to have seen in one of the watch 
 factories in Geneva, Switzerland, a little statue of 
 an auctioneer standing under a red flag, holding in 
 his hand a time-piece. The man's attitude was so 
 perfect, his expression so eager, so hurried and so 
 alert, in short, the whole representation was so 
 complete, that one's imagination endued the clock 
 with a voice that made every tick seem to utter 
 the word 'going.' It was a very pretty way of 
 reminding everybody that time is going, going, 
 going, that time may soon be gone. Longfellow 
 attributes to the clock's voice the words ' for- 
 ever never.' Pierpont refers to the swinging 
 pendulum as always whispering 'passing away,' 
 and some other poet calls the clock's tick ' that
 
 4O Emily Sanford Billings. 
 
 voice which forbids procrastination by incessantly 
 calling now, now, now.' To persons whose pow- 
 erful imagination or acute sense of hearing thus 
 invests matter with life, no better warning is 
 needed, for such can see the sands of life wasting 
 in an hour-glass, and the lamp of life go out in 
 every sunset ; such can hear requiems in the night 
 wind, and read elegies in the fading leaves. But 
 for the mass of men, whose thoughts are drowned 
 in the noisy din of business, or whose perceptions 
 are blunted by contact with the world, the anni- 
 versary holidays of Christmas and New Year 
 are untold blessings. They are the observatories 
 of life, whence men gaze out into the past and 
 learn how much can happen in a year. From 
 such a view, men come down better, if not hap- 
 pier. To mark attentively what has been, 
 makes one tremble for what is to be. The 
 light in the eye may fade, the rose on the cheek 
 may pale, the light of the heart may imper- 
 ceptibly lessen in the present, but in the pict- 
 ures of the past these things strike us most 
 startlingly."
 
 Revisit to Niagara, 41 
 
 I add an extract from a published letter upon 
 
 A REVISIT TO NIAGARA. 
 
 " Years ago, I had stood on the self-same spot 
 and seen its flight as hurried, and its rapids dash 
 and foam as wildly. Had they never rested since ? 
 Would they always keep pace with the flight of 
 time ? It tired me to think of it ; so I turned away 
 in search of the high rocks over which geography 
 used to say 670,000 tons of water fall every 
 moment. The mighty rushing sound of many 
 waters proclaimed them near; and surrounding 
 space echoed and reechoed the words, 'Al- 
 mighty, Eternal, Immutable,' from that voice of 
 thunder which God tuned at the foundation of 
 the world to sing His Omnipotence so long .as 
 time should last. The whole scene was as if I had 
 left it only yesterday ; the river still flowed on 
 over its emerald bed, and the foaming cataract 
 was sending up its incense of spray, now as before. 
 
 " Fowler, the famous phrenologist, once told me 
 that I had no bump of Reverence, and others vainly 
 have tried to excite the emotion since.
 
 42 Emily Sanford Billings. 
 
 "The idols to which Society bows have always 
 seemed, like myself, of the earth, earthy, and I have 
 scorned to yield homage to such ; but Niagara, 
 the unfathomable, all-conquering and resistless, 
 the magnificently terrible and overwhelmingly 
 grand, seemed a fit shrine at which to bend, and 
 involuntarily I knelt before it, under the influence 
 of a strange awe that would have trembled into 
 actual fear, had I not chanced to raise my eyes 
 and see God's bow of promise lying on the 
 Lunar Fall.' Then I remembered, that though 
 Niagara was great, He that created Niagara is 
 greater. 
 
 " The crushed violets beneath me sent forth per- 
 fume to whisper that their tiny lives were nour- 
 ished by the cataract's spray ; and little birds 
 sang sweetly over their torrent home, knowing 
 that ' He careth for them.' So I said to myself, 
 'Are you not of more value than many sparrows ?' 
 and went on my way along the precipice's edge, 
 and, like the flowers and the birds, was not afraid." 
 
 Her description of her loved New Haven and 
 of the bells summoning to church on the Sabbath 
 morning there, will, by its fidelity and vividness,
 
 New Haven Described. 43 
 
 bring the place and hour before all familiar with 
 them : 
 
 " The surrounding hills, which by right belong 
 to the Green Mountains of Vermont, look down 
 upon an unbroken level that is divided into 
 squares by streets lined with magnificent elms, so 
 placed at regular intervals that the interlaced 
 branches of opposite trees form, from one extrem- 
 ity of a street to another, the most perfect arch. 
 These trees, gigantic in size and most luxuriant in 
 foliage, are said to have resulted from a poet's 
 dream of beauty, and to have been planted some 
 seventy years ago by a poet's hand. Be that as it 
 may, they have christened their dwelling-place 
 with a most poetical sobriquet, ' The City of 
 Elms' 
 
 11 ' City of Steeples ' would be an appropriate, 
 name, for I never saw so many churches within so 
 small a compass. As you sit at the Tontine of a 
 Sunday morning, and hear the holy Sabbath still- 
 ness broken by the loud, clear music of their va- 
 rious bells, each within a stone's-throw of the other, 
 and all blending in the most perfect harmony, you 
 seem to have found your way nearer to Heaven 
 6
 
 44 Emily Sanford Billings. 
 
 than you ever were before. Then, when the last 
 throng you have watched crossing the neatly kept 
 green disappears from your sight, and the church 
 doors close, leaving the great outer temple de- 
 serted, involuntarily you wander forth, wooed by 
 the cool, inviting shade, and entranced by the 
 music of the myriads of birds that build in the old 
 elm boughs without any one to molest or make 
 them afraid. You would find it no difficult matter 
 to imagine yourself in the Garden of Eden, and 
 easily forget that man was driven forth to earn 
 his bread by the sweat of his brow. 
 
 "The society of New Haven must be highly 
 intelligent and refined, for the venerable seat of 
 learning in their midst makes the interest of the 
 people collegiate rather than commercial, and 
 gives a literary tone to every thing in its vicinity." 
 
 I add her account of an orphan whom she saw 
 in the Asylum there, and of her deep and intense 
 feelings in contemplating one so young, so beauti- 
 ful, and so unfortunate : 
 
 " A striking instance of this unequal distribu- 
 tion of fortune's favors came within my sphere of 
 observation in New Haven. At the Orphan
 
 The Little Orphan. 45 
 
 Asylum of that place I saw twenty-five or thirty 
 children of various ages, between three and twelve. 
 There were bright-eyed boys and laughing-lipped 
 girls sitting in their little school-room when I en- 
 tered. They were singing ' I want to be an angel,' 
 and most of them looked to be so much of the 
 earth, earthy, that I couldn't help thinking through 
 what a long series of transmigrations their souls 
 would have to pass before they could realize their 
 wish to change the human into divine. 
 
 " But, amid the crowd of little faces uplifted to 
 watch the visitors whose idle curiosity they were 
 trained to satisfy, I really saw but one. A little 
 girl, of infantile proportions and baby features, 
 threw over me a spell which it was impossible to 
 arrest or displace. I cannot tell you whether she 
 was a blonde or brunette. I did not even guess 
 her age or learn her name, but I am sure she will 
 haunt me forever. She carried about her some 
 strange charm that with magnetic power drew her 
 to my heart, and left there the picture of a cherub 
 that comes up before me to illustrate the pen of 
 every poet, and to rival the dream of every artist. 
 I found her, as it were, something I had wanted
 
 46 Emily Sanford Billings. 
 
 all my life-long without knowing it, and there 
 she stood, just within my reach and yet so far 
 beyond it. 
 
 "To me there is something heart-rending in 
 the sight of a motherless child. Like some lone 
 bark, tossed by mighty billows, I tremble for it. 
 My heart yearns for it, and my hand involuntarily 
 stretches out to protect it. I want to shelter it in 
 my own arms, cradle it on my own breast, comfort 
 it all my life ; and yet, as I sat there among those 
 poor little orphans, with the tears rolling down my 
 cheek, I seemed to forget them all in one, or 
 rather to concentrate the misery of all in that one 
 whom I longed to secure from sorrow and misfort- 
 une. I drew the little creature to my side, caught 
 her in my arms, and kissed her time and time again. 
 She received my caresses in the most matter-of- 
 course way, and heard my praises as heedlessly 
 as if she had been used to them all her life. Other 
 children gathered around, envyingly, and seemed 
 to crave the notice which she so lightly esteemed; 
 and if it had been money they asked, I could have 
 easily scattered it among them, but my affections 
 went forth only to her.
 
 Lady Franklin. 47 
 
 " This is only a single instance ; but the ' New 
 Testament ' will give you another ; for, though it 
 mentions many men who came to our Saviour, 
 of only one does it say, ' Now, when Jesus looked 
 upon the young man, He loved him/ " 
 
 V 
 
 Interest in Lady Franklin. 
 
 BUT of all her published thoughts, those which 
 attracted most attention and elicited most 
 admiration, not only from scholars, but also from 
 all generous-minded people, were her soul-stirring 
 appeals, written and published with a view to 
 arouse public and individual efforts for the dis- 
 covery of the fate which had overtaken Sir John 
 Franklin. I subjoin an extract from one of these 
 fervent letters : 
 
 " ' Hope deferred maketh the heart sick.' Go, 
 ask the Lady Franklin what that saying meaneth. 
 She has watched for steps that come not ; she has
 
 48 Emily Sanford Billings. 
 
 long and vainly listened for a once familiar voice. 
 She has seen the fairest hopes a fond heart ever 
 cherished grow ripe with expectation, only to 
 fade and droop and die under the chilling blasts 
 of disappointment. 
 
 " Day by day she has waited, trusted, believed, 
 only to find patience, trust, and hope empty delu- 
 sions, bitter mockeries, until days have grown into 
 weeks, and months become years. 
 
 " Full well she knows the agony of harrowing 
 suspense that fears to hope the best, and refuses to 
 believe the worst ; that clings to straws and chases 
 fire-flies, pining for hope and yearning for light. 
 
 " Her busy thoughts have drawn from the long 
 fibres of possibility every conceivable excuse for 
 such unreasonable delay. Daylight fancies and 
 nightly dreams have portrayed every variety of 
 suffering to aggravate the already painful circum- 
 stances ; for, while the certainty of evil has a limit, 
 where the sufferer finds at least a resting-place, 
 suspense is boundless, illimitable, reflecting itself 
 in everything, until its cause is magnified a hun- 
 dred-fold. Positive grief falls on the heart a heavy 
 blow ; but its hopelessness is its own cure. Time
 
 Lady Franklin. 49 
 
 heals the wound and wears away the scar, and 
 useless lamentation gives place to stoical indiffer- 
 ence or heavenly resignation ; but, in suspense, 
 expectancy keeps the sorrow always fresh, the 
 heart always sore, and the days and weeks and 
 years that pass over it only serve to irritate and 
 inflame the wound. 
 
 " Suspense is the slowest but surest canker that 
 ever preyed upon human vitals ; and there is no 
 greater benefactor to his kind than he who endeav- 
 ors to draw it from the heart doomed to its har- 
 rowing caprices. The generous and humane who 
 have spent their energies or their wealth in search 
 of certainty, by which to minister to minds long 
 diseased with suspense, require no eulogies. In 
 their consciousness of magnanimity have they their 
 own exceeding great reward. 
 
 " The volunteers, who ' took their lives in their 
 hands ' and went forth over the pathless waves in 
 search of the lost ones, needed not shouts of 
 applause to mark their going, or triumphal pro- 
 cessions to greet their return. Far across the sea, 
 there dwells a noble heart whose thoughts and 
 hopes followed them on all their dangerous way.
 
 50 Emily Sanford Billings, 
 
 And ' He who keepeth the waters in the hollow of 
 His hand,' listening to that lone heart's prayer for 
 them, calmed the troubled waves and tempered 
 the mighty winds, that they wafted the mari- 
 ners safely home. And, though their trusty ships 
 brought not the long- watched- for wanderer back 
 again, the widowed one hailed joyfully their com- 
 ing, even as she felt gratefully their going. The 
 hopes and thanks and prayers of such a soul, are 
 they not pearls of great price ? I have no words 
 in which to express my admiration of the noble 
 Lady Franklin. She is an honor to my sex, such 
 as the records of time have known of but few. 
 
 "The fortitude, energy, and perseverance which 
 have characterized her during all the season of 
 trial, which would have entirely paralyzed most 
 women, must win for her the respect of all man- 
 kind, even as it has enlisted the earnest sympa- 
 thies of the whole civilized world. A sincere 
 Christian, a model wife, 
 
 "'A perfect woman, nobly planned.' 
 
 " Such, I am sure, is the Lady Jane fit help- 
 meet for such a husband as the noble patriot, the
 
 Appreciation of Her Letters. 5 1 
 
 
 
 brave seaman, the generous, self-sacrificing Sir 
 John Franklin. 
 
 " The world is ringing with this earnest cry 
 ' Wanted Hearts to feel for the sufferings of the 
 perishing hands to relieve the necessities of the 
 destitute and minds to determine for them the 
 simplest and surest mode of relief.' 
 
 " If so deep the interest felt for those who at- 
 tempt to settle this doubtful question, what words 
 can paint the warm glow of sympathy that will 
 kindle in every heart when this crisis of suspense 
 is passed, and the world breathes forth its wel- 
 come to the wanderer, its blessing on his saviour ? 
 For whom is reserved that honorable title ? The 
 Roman triumphs were not so great, for they re- 
 joiced over the lost ; here will be the holy grati- 
 tude of the saved. The Grecian conquests were 
 not so bold, for they did not overcome unknown 
 obstacles." 
 
 Henry Grinnell, whose philanthropy in fur- 
 nishing vessels for the Arctic Expedition is re- 
 membered with patriotic pride by every American, 
 so forcibly felt the magnanimity and power of 
 those letters, that he gave a dinner in honor of 
 7
 
 52 Emily Sanford Billings. 
 
 their author. The entertainment was given on 
 Bond street, in the city of New York, in the year 
 1854. A distinguished company was present to 
 meet her, among them Dr. Elisha Kent Kane, who 
 published "A Narrative of the Expedition in 
 search of Sir John Franklin." 
 
 She received, also, from Lady Franklin herself, 
 a letter in which she expressed her deep sense of 
 gratitude for those valued appeals to the Ameri- 
 can mind in behalf of herself and her knowledge- 
 loving husband. 
 
 The letters from which the foregoing extracts 
 have been made are characterized by such pre- 
 cision in idea and expression, by such comprehen- 
 siveness and condensed and sustained energy of 
 thought, by such beauty and grandeur of imagery, 
 and by such elevation and tenderness of feeling ; 
 the fire and touch of genius is so unmistakably in 
 them, and to such a degree had she interested in- 
 tellectual people in her writings, that success and 
 fame of no mean order were already assured to her 
 in the walks of literature, had she continued in 
 them.
 
 Life as Mrs. Armstrong. 53 
 
 VI 
 
 Life as the Wife of Captain James F. Armstrong. 
 
 IN January, 1858, she intermarried with Cap- 
 tain James F. Armstrong, of the United States 
 Navy. He was a gentleman of excellent family, 
 was a member of the Society of the Cincinnati, 
 was a man of unusual intelligence, great frankness 
 of character, polished manners, and abounded in 
 agreeable information which he had gathered in 
 his intercourse with a large circle of highly edu- 
 cated friends, and in the multiplied and varied 
 voyages he had made as naval commander. 
 
 His was a tender and affectionate nature to- 
 wards which children were always drawn. He 
 was not only a husband, ever kind and devoted, 
 but he was a lover throughout his married life. I 
 knew him through others, chiefly through her, 
 and it was impossible not to feel admiration for 
 his character. " Good, kind, true, noble-hearted, 
 high-minded man " : these are the words with
 
 54 Emily Sanford Billings. 
 
 which I find she characterized him in her diary upon 
 one of the recent anniversaries of his death, and his 
 whole life showed that they were richly deserved. 
 
 As his wife, her social life was largely with 
 those brilliant men who then constituted our naval 
 commanders, and their not less brilliant wives, at 
 the various naval stations where her husband, 
 Captain Armstrong, was in command. In these 
 circles, the richness of her ideas, the sparkle of her 
 conversation, and the generosity and gracefulness 
 of her hospitality made her a shining ornament. 
 
 Their home life was that of two pure, confiding 
 natures, striving tenderly to make each other 
 happy, and with rare capacity to afford happiness. 
 It was a union to which she brought the large 
 purposes with which she ever enfolded those she 
 loved. It was a union productive of mutual hap- 
 piness, earnest and deep. It was severed by the 
 death of Captain Armstrong, in the early part of 
 the year 1873.
 
 
 Our Marriage. 55 
 
 VII 
 
 Life as Wife of the Author. 
 
 ON the 2oth day of October, 1874, we were 
 married. The ceremony was performed by 
 President Porter, who, in addition to his own rela- 
 tions as a friend to us, was the husband of that 
 choice spirit who had been her mother's, and ever 
 was her, true friend. He had been my professor 
 when I was a student in Yale College. We were 
 married in New Haven, in Centre Church, where, 
 for the period of fifty-eight years, her parents 
 had worshiped, the calm air and sacred asso- 
 ciations of which she had enjoyed throughout 
 childhood and youth, and almost on the very 
 spot, where, twenty years before, I had stood in 
 delivering my philosophical oration at Commence- 
 ment. 
 
 O ye joys which beam upon and beckon to us 
 from out the glad future which lies before all-ex- 
 pectant youth, and which ofttimes fade from us,
 
 56 Emily Sanford Billings. 
 
 obscured by the sorrows and narrowing struggles 
 of later years, how did ye then come thronging 
 back to me with your old-time, glowing aspect 
 and with all the rapture and twice the tenderness 
 of your early promise ! 
 
 From the time when, in assuming our marriage 
 vows, she placed her hand in mine, down to the 
 hours when, cold and stiffening in death, I still 
 clasped it, the grasp was as of a hand reached 
 down from heaven, leading me thither. Our mar- 
 ried life was to me " another morn risen on mid- 
 noon." It was a long polar day, it was a "walk 
 through meadows blossom-paved." She was so 
 constituted as to gather the elements of content 
 and diversion and progress from the small, as well 
 as the great, events of life, and she poured forth 
 her ever-renewed, exhaustless treasures of thought 
 before her companion, keeping full every recep- 
 tivity of enjoyment by her playfulness, her sym- 
 pathies, her taste, and her culture. 
 
 Self-denying, self-forgetting, alike in sickness 
 and in health, she followed me with unslumbering 
 care and upward-tending suggestion like that of 
 the ministering spirits sent forth from God.
 
 Our Joint Life. 57 
 
 Our enjoyment had the mellowness of the mid- 
 day of life, along with the unabated freshness of 
 its youth. It was found, not in idyllic leisure, but 
 amid constant occupation, and would have been as 
 complete and soul-satisfying without a luxury and 
 in the straitened ways of poverty, or even by the 
 road-side, as it was in our houses crowded with 
 comforts. For it was above and beyond these 
 accidents. 
 
 The radiant and pure spirit of beauty that walks 
 hand in hand with true marriage, comes it like the 
 wind which bloweth where it listeth, without visi- 
 ble origin ? So that it is found, or, alas ! missed 
 without cause ? O no ; it emanates from what are 
 among the most real, as well as the best, of human 
 attributes. It has its origin and sustenance in 
 mutual, implicit trust, " heart answering to heart 
 as face to face in water " ; in aims and aspirations 
 formed and kept so plastic, so impressible, that 
 similitude, almost identity, results ; one string re- 
 sponding to another with music when it is not 
 smitten, because the key or pitch is the same, and 
 because there are borne to it by the pulses of 
 the air its own cognate vibrations, awakening its
 
 58 Emily Sanford Billings. 
 
 note and compelling its response by that law of 
 harmony which slumbers in all created things ; 
 in disinterestedness in habitually, systematically 
 finding truest development, highest satisfaction, by 
 each in honor, in ease, and in happiness preferring 
 the other. 
 
 In that awfully solemn and sublime Apocalypse, 
 revealed in the Isle of Patmos to that "beloved 
 disciple " who styles himself as " brother and com- 
 panion in tribulation," the mystical suggestion of 
 both David and Isaiah is adopted as a distinct 
 symbol, and the Saviour and His organized follow- 
 ers are represented as "The Lamb" and "His 
 Bride." The exalted possibilities, inhering in true 
 marriage, it is, which caused it thus to stand forth 
 as the divinely selected emblem of the ineffably 
 holy intimacy and union between the Redeemer 
 and His Church and make it forever true that, as 
 in our Christian, so in our wedded life, may we 
 " climb on stepping-stones oi our dead selves to 
 higher things." 
 
 Among those who shared with us our joy on the 
 occasion of our marriage were an officer in our navy 
 and his gentle and loving wife, whose joint friend-
 
 The Picture of Iris. 59 
 
 ship for us had such genial warmth and inventive 
 constancy that from year to year it quickened 
 our lives, like the sun's rays ; and whose unosten- 
 tatious, unslumbering, tender mutual devotion gave 
 to their daily married life the rhythm and inspi- 
 ration of a sweet, rich poem. These friends, jour- 
 neying for years abroad, had obtained for us an 
 oil-painting, the presentation of which had been 
 unavoidably delayed until both fondly loved wives 
 had gone from us, leaving earthly life naught but 
 a picture, when one surviving husband in solitude 
 delivered and the other in solitude received this 
 now inexpressibly sacred token. The painting 
 was of Iris, who in the early dawn, the earth 
 still covered by the twilight beneath, is bearing 
 in her pitcher, from the lakes and rivers to the 
 clouds which are lighted up by the breaking day, 
 the water which the poets fabled was to be re- 
 turned to its sources in showers and dews. The 
 mythological conception typifies with every auxil- 
 iary from art the ceaseless movement of the courses 
 of nature ; but the circumstances attending the exe- 
 cution of the gift proclaim, even from the grave to 
 the grave, how incapable of stay or hindrance is the
 
 60 Emily Sanford Billings. 
 
 current of human kindness, and how surely our affec- 
 tions and our purposes survive even our lives below. 
 We passed our winters in New Orleans, and 
 our summers in New Haven, proceeding from one 
 place to the other by easy journeys, and stopping 
 for rest for two or three days, either in Cincinnati 
 or Washington, according to the route which we 
 took. The migrations were full of quiet advent- 
 ure which interested her attentive faculties, and in 
 themselves were scarcely more tiresome than the 
 annual flight and return of the birds. She reveled 
 in the bloom of the flowers and the unchecked ver- 
 dure of the trees and plants in our Southern home, 
 in its clear mellow skies, in the airiness of char- 
 acter and manner which is found, not only in the 
 French-speaking portion of the citizens of New 
 Orleans, but to some extent among all, in the 
 amusements which are well-nigh perpetual, in the 
 hospitalities extended to famous people from 
 abroad, and in her elegant intercourse, in which 
 her amiable, warm-hearted nature delighted, with 
 those true and tried New Orleans friends whose 
 admiration for her was shown by the most thought- 
 ful, unremitting kindness,
 
 Summer Delights. 61 
 
 With equal zest and tenderer emotions did she 
 come to the shade and coolness, the substantial 
 thoughts, the delightfully intellectual atmosphere, 
 to the friends of the heart, many and cultivated, to 
 the drives by the indented and picturesque north- 
 ern shore of the Sound and out upon the fragrant 
 hills, to the leisure and rest and miscellaneous 
 reading, to the old-time Sabbath worship, and to 
 the loved guests that filled the bright hours 
 throughout the summer days of our Northern 
 sojournings. 
 
 Without effort and unconsciously, in all this 
 varied existence, she ''decorated and cheered 
 every sphere in which she moved, glittering like 
 the morning star, full of life and joy and splen- 
 dor." 
 
 Who that participated in conversation with her 
 did not suspend it with regret and resume it with 
 delight ? finding therein fullness without satiety, 
 variety without repetition or diffuseness, the ut- 
 terance and perception of the nicest shades of 
 humor, brilliancy which inflicted nor wound nor 
 sting, all impelled and guided by a spirit as un- 
 flagging as that of the most moving orators.
 
 64 Emily Sanford Billings. 
 
 This purpose, this habit of mind, it was that 
 made her judgment on all subjects so well-nigh 
 unfailing, that made her so painstaking in her 
 inquiry, and so careful to expunge from the equa- 
 tion mere feeling. This, too, was the secret of 
 her patience in hearing those who differed from 
 her, and of her independence in her estimate of 
 persons and events when finally reached ; for the 
 censure or approbation of others was valuable to 
 her only as it had solid foundation. 
 
 She had within herself such resources for self- 
 occupation and the entertainment of others, that 
 the days when we were separated from the world 
 by travel, or rain, or sickness were really the 
 brightest. 
 
 Often when I would express some disquiet on 
 leaving her in the morning for my court duties, 
 lest she might not have enough to amuse her for 
 the day, would she reply with a smile : "I have 
 myself, my thoughts, my books, and my pen ; I 
 shall be entertained." It was not merely that she 
 had abounding information, nor merely that she 
 had it in her mind arranged in so orderly a man- 
 ner as to be readily brought forward, nor merely
 
 Fidelity of Her Nature. 65 
 
 that she had such quick sympathies and so con- 
 stant a desire to make the time pass pleasantly as 
 to make her explore with quickness and vigor the 
 recesses of her mind for material for thought and 
 intercourse, but it was the operation of all these 
 advantages, together with a spirit of serene con- 
 tentment such as the fabled wise were represented 
 to have had, which was contagious, that made our 
 days of isolation from our fellows seem all too few 
 and too short. 
 
 Connected with this trait was her deep satisfac- 
 tion with her own, which she cherished, not with 
 the narrow purpose with which the miser hoards, 
 but from that spirit which led her to invest with 
 sacredness and dignity her personal existence and 
 all that radiated from it. Never was a sweet 
 thought or grateful association, once connected 
 with an object, allowed in her mind to be dis- 
 severed from it. When her well-poised judgment 
 had selected an article, or a friend, she rarely 
 abandoned her choice. So far from the old and 
 tried becoming in her eyes, from the lapse of time, 
 wearisome, fit to be supplanted by the new, 
 the passing years did but impart confirmation and
 
 64 Emily Sanford Billings. 
 
 This purpose, this habit of mind, it was that 
 made her judgment on all subjects so well-nigh 
 unfailing, that made her so painstaking in her 
 inquiry, and so careful to expunge from the equa- 
 tion mere feeling. This, too, was the secret of 
 her patience in hearing those who differed from 
 her, and of her independence in her estimate of 
 persons and events when finally reached ; for the 
 censure or approbation of others was valuable to 
 her only as it had solid foundation. 
 
 She had within herself such resources for self- 
 occupation and the entertainment of others, that 
 the days when we were separated from the world 
 by travel, or rain, or sickness were really the 
 brightest. 
 
 Often when I would express some disquiet on 
 leaving her in the morning for my court duties, 
 lest she might not have enough to amuse her for 
 the day, would she reply with a smile : "I have 
 myself, my thoughts, my books, and my pen ; I 
 shall be entertained." It was not merely that she 
 had abounding information, nor merely that she 
 had it in her mind arranged in so orderly a man- 
 ner as to be readily brought forward, nor merely
 
 Fidelity of Her Nature. 65 
 
 that she had such quick sympathies and so con- 
 stant a desire to make the time pass pleasantly as 
 to make her explore with quickness and vigor the 
 recesses of her mind for material for thought and 
 intercourse, but it was the operation of all these 
 advantages, together with a spirit of serene con- 
 tentment such as the fabled wise were represented 
 to have had, which was contagious, that made our 
 days of isolation from our fellows seem all too few 
 and too short. 
 
 Connected with this trait was her deep satisfac- 
 tion with her own, which she cherished, not with 
 the narrow purpose with which the miser hoards, 
 but from that spirit which led her to invest with 
 sacredness and dignity her personal existence and 
 all that radiated from it. Never was a sweet 
 thought or grateful association, once connected 
 with an object, allowed in her mind to be dis- 
 severed from it. When her well-poised judgment 
 had selected an article, or a friend, she rarely 
 abandoned her choice. So far from the old and 
 tried becoming in her eyes, from the lapse of time, 
 wearisome, fit to be supplanted by the new, 
 the passing years did but impart confirmation and
 
 66 Emily Sanford Billings. 
 
 veneration to her preferences. Her memory was 
 like a land abounding in altars which had been 
 erected to, and were guarded for, those who had 
 made her happy. 
 
 Her appreciation of kindness was new every 
 morning and fresh every evening ; was so natural, 
 ingenuous, and varied, so from a child-like heart, 
 that one forgot the possibility of weariness from 
 any contributory effort, in the pleasure of witness- 
 ing her responsive delight in its reception. 
 
 How shall I express in fit words the fidelity 
 of her nature her unswerving adherence to a 
 character or an act which she knew to deserve 
 approbation ? She admired and loved cautiously, 
 and with keenest discrimination, but, when once 
 her heart had been carried, nothing but discov- 
 ered falsity could diminish her esteem or chill her 
 affection. How cheerfully she endured, or rather 
 how she gloried in, sacrifice for whom she loved ! 
 How bravely she stood up for the absent or the 
 dead whom she had known favorably from history 
 or in life, if their motives were called in question ! 
 In her deep nature, love and admiration seemed to 
 be spontaneous, emotional, and enthusiastic, but
 
 Her Open-handedness. 67 
 
 seemed at the same time to have the uniformity, 
 the fixedness, the unfailing certainty that belong 
 to principles and convictions. With her, misfort- 
 une heightened excellence, and inability, on the 
 part of the worthy, to repay kindness, moved her 
 to redouble it. Her generosity was princely. In 
 the selection of her objects of sympathy she so in- 
 fallibly sifted the chaff from the wheat, her char- 
 ity was measured by such judgment, and was 
 administered with such infinite tact and such total 
 absence of ostentation, that the world knew little 
 of it. Her whole nature delighted in a generous 
 act, and shrank from, and almost scorned, any out- 
 side echo from it, as if the renown from unselfish 
 conduct marred its beauty. Her gifts were secret, 
 unobserved of men, save by their recipients, falling 
 " mutely, like the dew upon the hills." But they 
 were incessant, inducing, of course, provision 
 through more or less self-denial or the regulation 
 of expenditures, and rendered doubly useful by her 
 wise and timely bestowal. Whether, in obedience 
 to the dictates of her sense of duty, and in spite of 
 the remonstrances of almost all her friends, by a 
 single conveyance she irrevocably granted well- 
 
 9 
 

 
 68 Emily Sanford Billings. 
 
 nigh half of her individual estate ; or whether, with 
 almost filial love, she for years clothed some once 
 affluent, always and universally respected lady 
 whom poverty and affliction had flung far from 
 her elevated place in society, and reduced to 
 almost want, sharing her sorrows, supplying her 
 every need with such alacrity and enjoyment that 
 the blessing of the giver was, by both, felt to be 
 even greater than that of the receiver ; whatever 
 she day by day did, in her original, beneficent 
 way of doing for others, was done not from a rap- 
 idly expended impulse to please by a donation, 
 but from the deep-rooted purpose to do good, to 
 do a loving and kind act, to heal some wound, to 
 assuage some sorrow. It was literal magnanimity, 
 the expansion, the reaching forth of a great soul 
 towards others, because it was its nature to act in 
 a manner truly great. 
 
 The readiness with which she entered into all 
 the favorable circumstances of life in New Or- 
 leans, the delightful constancy with which she 
 dwelt upon them, as well as the power with which 
 she could depict them, is strikingly shown in a 
 letter to a very dear friend, dated there in 1880,
 
 Her Tender Fondness for Home. 69 
 
 She says : " I have tried St. Augustine, Jackson- 
 ville, and the other Florida resorts, and abominate 
 them all. They narrow life down to the very 
 necessities of existence, and it seems to me that 
 an invalid requires to be tempted with the luxuries 
 of life, and to be diverted from thoughts of pain 
 and despondency by the sight of, if not the par- 
 ticipation in, amusements. In New Orleans it is 
 possible to command every luxury which every 
 climate yields, and impossible to avoid amusement 
 if one took no trouble to procure it. Then, there 
 is so much beauty in the floral surroundings, and 
 so much to be learned of the peculiarities of the 
 people from their out-of-door life, that one cannot 
 fail to be entertained. There is so much of the 
 French element here that the streets are always 
 gay, and the predominance of the Catholic religion 
 gives one always one festival or another to cele- 
 brate." 
 
 What a shrine to her, what a repository of as- 
 sociations in which were blended a child's sus- 
 ceptibility and woman's deepest feelings, was the 
 old home in New Haven, where she was born and 
 where her youth was nurtured, where her parents
 
 7<3 Emily Sanford Billings. 
 
 had lived half a century, and from which the dead 
 of her family, whom she so loved, had been borne, 
 appears in a letter to the same dear friend. She 
 says: "It hardly seems possible that in little 
 more than a month I shall again see the dear old 
 home and the familiar faces, but when I think of it 
 my heart bounds. Whenever I am sick else- 
 where, it seems to me that if I were within those 
 sacred walls within which I was born, and under 
 those grand old elms, I should find an electric 
 light that would have some healing power, and 
 that even, if still suffering, I should in spirit be 
 watched over and soothed by those who used to 
 nurse me back to health in those delightful, long- 
 ago years." 
 
 " With what measure ye mete, it shall be meas- 
 ured to you again," is a truth especially manifest 
 in the known approach of death, and in death 
 itself, when all that is responsive to departing 
 excellence speaks out. As intelligence of her cul- 
 minating illness and critical danger went abroad 
 to her friends, the sympathy and sorrow that 
 poured in through numerous letters from gifted 
 souls, throughout the length and breadth of the
 
 Her Sweetness of Disposition. 7 1 
 
 land, and from England and Germany and Spain, 
 showed the fidelity of a nature that could evoke 
 such evidence of wide-spread, unslumbering af- 
 fection. It were worth the longest life to close it 
 as the center of such love, such honor, such grate- 
 ful emotion as came to her during her last days 
 and has come to me since her death, from such a 
 number of great and pure souls in spontaneous 
 and tender attestation of her worth. It was a 
 demonstration of the possible pathos in human 
 character, and of the reward and renown which 
 wait on intellect swayed by goodness. The 
 fidelity in her which inspired it was life-long, was 
 so identified with her, was so inflexible, that, with 
 those who knew her intimately, to name her was 
 to say "faithfulness to the right, to the convic- 
 tion of duty, and to the instincts of changeless 
 affection." 
 
 The transcendently endearing quality of her 
 disposition, which was in her character what 
 Raphael's ineffable expression of face is in his 
 Madonnas, was its sweetness. Without any of 
 the monotony of mere amiability, without warp- 
 ing her clear and upright judgment, ever attend-
 
 72 Emily Sanford Billings. 
 
 ant upon the buoyant spirit and brilliancy of her 
 mind, was the warmth and glow of a nature 
 necessarily, " without shadow of turning," truly, 
 deeply kind, that nestled in and clung to all that 
 was benign in life. This it was that made her so 
 gentle to the aged and to the sorrowing ; so fond 
 of home ; so tenacious of the memories of child- 
 hood ; so appreciative of truth and refinement ; 
 that gave her such quick discernment of upright- 
 ness and independence and of culture, such ad- 
 miration for friendship, such communion with 
 nature, and such reverence for the dead. As the 
 rose, by the law of its development, must, along 
 with its brightness of colors, produce its exhalation 
 of odor, so it was a law of her spiritual being 
 that, along with all her bright thoughts, should 
 come a whispered suggestion of what is gentle 
 and benign and gracious and morally beautiful 
 in existence. 
 
 There is imperfection, in any transfer to can- 
 vas, of beauty of feature and expression in the 
 natural countenance, and the inability increases 
 with the rise in the degree or order of the beauty 
 sought to be reproduced. How much more of
 
 Pictures, Imperfect Translations. 73 
 
 difficulty in the embodiment in adequate descrip- 
 tion of the peculiarities and inspiring purposes 
 of noble character ! How much of the loftiness 
 of her resolves, of her unselfish devotion to the 
 pure and the good, eludes the power of expres- 
 sion, "in matter-molded forms of speech," and 
 how much of the reverence which we felt in 
 witnessing her life remains wanting, as we con- 
 template its delineation, though affection contin- 
 ually prompted the memory and lingers in every 
 constituent word ! 
 
 How truly has Lord Bacon said, " That is the 
 best part of beauty which a picture does not (fully) 
 give." 
 
 "What practice, howsoe'er expert, 
 In fitting aptest words to things, 
 Or voice, the richest- toned that sings, 
 Hath power to give thee as thou wert ! "
 
 Emily Sanford Billings. 
 
 IX 
 
 Her Last Sickness. 
 
 ON the 6th day of February, 1885, in New 
 Orleans, the clouds began to gather in our 
 clear and soft sky never to be dispersed. Then 
 suddenly commenced an illness that baffled all 
 medical skill aided by all the ministrations of 
 affection. For I can now see that from that day 
 she constantly, gradually, declined in strength. 
 When relief was not afforded, her physician from 
 New Haven was summoned, whose presence had 
 ever been to us both, not only that of one highly 
 skilled in his art, but also that of a beloved brother. 
 With his cooperation, the surgeon in attendance 
 was enabled to overcome the immediate cause of 
 danger. Her dear friend, who had been her 
 teacher, gladly came also. The sweet sufferer, as 
 well as I myself, hoped and believed she was pro- 
 gressing toward recovery. 
 
 On the 25th of April, I accompanied her and 
 this friend to Washington, where I left them for 
 an anticipated sojourn of three or four weeks, and
 
 Shadows. 75 
 
 a subsequent progress to the old home in New 
 Haven, there to await my coming. I returned to 
 my duties in New Orleans. But on the twelfth 
 day of my separation from her, there came evidence 
 that alarmed me ; it was an unfinished letter 
 from her to me. So delicately thoughtful and so 
 resolutely active had she ever been to forestall 
 and allay apprehension about her, on my part, that 
 full well I knew her illness must be indeed pros- 
 trating. Through the great kindness of Justice 
 Woods, who was then at my house in New 
 Orleans, and of Judge Pardee, a brother judge 
 was assigned to sit in my place, and I immediately 
 hurried on to rejoin her in Washington. Dr. 
 Huntington, of the U. S. Army, a prized friend of 
 college days, in whose medical care I had there 
 left her, accompanied us to New Haven. We were 
 all buoyant with the hope that her reinstatement 
 in the atmosphere and amid the surroundings that 
 had always proved so genial and restorative, and 
 under the medical skill that had so often brought 
 relief, would reestablish health. 
 
 Except for the intrusion of an occasional anxious 
 thought, which we banished as unfounded, the days 
 from May to August were the most supremely 
 10
 
 76 Emily Sanford Billings. 
 
 happy of all our many blissful days. With the 
 exception of the servants, we were for the most 
 part alone. The weather was unusually temperate. 
 We passed from morning till night in reading 
 aloud together the sacred and classic writers, and 
 in the nameless diversions of comfortable illness, 
 in a home which, through her ingenuity and taste, 
 was supplied with all that could be desired by the 
 fastidious in health or by the delicate in sickness. 
 She filled our joint life with the light of her 
 cheerfulness. She gave playful names to the 
 medicines and the wraps for the sick-room which 
 moved us to laughter, as day after day we repeated 
 them. Feeble as she was, she was unwearied in 
 her inventive sportiveness. She strove in every 
 way to beguile me from anxiety and to dispossess 
 me of fear. How little did I dream throughout these 
 halcyon days that so near us " sat that shadow 
 feared of man," 
 
 " Who broke our fair companionship, 
 
 Who bore thee where I could not see, 
 Nor follow, though I walk in haste, 
 And think that somewhere in the waste 
 That shadow sits and waits for me."
 
 Her Calmness and Courage. 77 
 
 In August, both her physician and we our- 
 selves were convinced that relief could come from 
 surgery alone. She then determined to avail her- 
 self of surgical skill of the highest order and 
 where its efficacy could be most certainly counted 
 upon. From this point of time she manifested a 
 placidity, a calmness, always unruffled. This 
 outward aspect was the result, in part, of her un- 
 willingness to add to my distress, which seemed 
 to weigh more with her than the danger threat- 
 ening her life ; partly of the serious wisdom with 
 which she met all life's experiences ; largely of in- 
 born vigor of courage, that did but assert and 
 re-assert itself and increase and rise in its might, 
 as came, like the billows of a dark sea, the terrible 
 demands upon it; and most of all, of that high 
 and holy habit of communion with her Heavenly 
 Father, which eliminated all terror from events 
 since they proceeded from Him. 
 
 I had learned how tender she was of the feel- 
 ings of loved ones, how much "she could suppress 
 of fainting nature's feebleness," how she could 
 hide all traces of suffering with a smile, even when 
 she was racked with internal torture. I had seen
 
 , 78 Emily Sanford Billings. 
 
 too, and that often, how her nature with its fawn- 
 like timidity in the midst of the ways of safety, 
 when critical dangers confronted, took on calm- 
 ness and courage; but I was unprepared for the 
 disclosures of the very wisdom of composure and 
 the almost hardihood of bravery which she mani- 
 fested from this time down to the hour of her 
 death. When the two ordeals of suffering through 
 surgery came, after saying the prayer of Stephen 
 this gentle being took leave of me to face her pain 
 and danger with a tranquillity of look and voice 
 and manner, and of her whole being, as absolutely 
 undisturbed as though she had been about to enter 
 a friend's parlor or a place of amusement. She 
 was sustained by more than native courage, fath- 
 omless as that quality seemed to be in her bosom ; 
 she was also upborne and rendered so delightfully 
 composed by the Christian's faith. 
 
 In September, we went to New York by the 
 easiest possible contrivances. Without a murmur 
 or an uttered regret, she left her home, so redo- 
 lent of tender associations. With a spirit which 
 had the elasticity of the air itself she went through 
 all her succeeding trials, so manifold and ex-
 
 Conscious Approach of Death. 79 
 
 hausting, which to one constituted with her 
 exquisite delicacy and sensitiveness must have 
 brought such keen pangs. 
 
 For six weeks we were like little children in 
 our joy, buoyant in the belief that a cure had been 
 attained. The seventh week shook our confidence. 
 Misgivings were more frequent, and were harder 
 to be cast out. So steadfastly does absorbing 
 affection cling to what constitutes all that is dear 
 and precious in existence, and refuse to perceive 
 inevitable danger slowly creeping on towards it, 
 that it was not until the last fortnight of her life, 
 that she and I realized that our two beings, which, 
 like the fibers of the wood and bark in the living 
 tree, had closed and adhered and coalesced, 
 had grown into one, were to be cleft in twain, 
 to be rent asunder ; that the path of one of us was 
 to be " in fields we knew," and of one " in undis- 
 covered lands." O tender human hearts all over 
 the world ! How would you add to your mutually 
 bestowed love, even where it is given in most 
 generous largess ; how would you quicken and 
 multiply its swiftest and most numerous ministra- 
 tions and soften its gentlest utterances ; how
 
 8o Emily Sanford Billings. 
 
 would you transfer kindness from the sphere of 
 thought and intention to that of life and act, if, 
 beforehand, ye could but half know the broken - 
 heartedness, the suddenness and bitterness of the 
 woe of impending and accomplished separation, 
 which is by survivors called Death ! If ye could 
 even dimly foresee how, though God and duty and 
 hope of Heaven graciously abide, upon the sever- 
 ance of lives truly companioned, to the soul left on 
 the earth there come no more the thrill and ecstasy 
 of newly unfolding being, but rather, amid the 
 veiled and processional events of each to-day, 
 there lingers and stirs the commemoration of a 
 receptive and responsive yesterday, and in spite 
 of prayer and faith existence comes to be an 
 almost unbroken sacrament ! 
 
 Throughout her illness, growing broader, 
 deeper, vastly enriched towards the close, was the 
 development of her character as a Christian. All 
 through our married life she abhorred cant, and 
 sensitively shrank from often speaking fully, even 
 to me, of her religious experiences. While her 
 religious feelings were intense, she seemed to 
 view them as too sacred to be exhibited to
 
 Her Religion, Life not Words. 81 
 
 others in set phrases. But they were disclosed 
 with no less certainty and earnestness, and with 
 more striking influence upon others, because ut- 
 tered only by well-understood reference, or most 
 frequently expressed in some act which showed 
 triumph over, or abnegation of, personal comfort or 
 preference. To her mind Religion was life not 
 so much a conception as an embodiment ; was 
 to be apprehended and taught and striven for, not 
 in any formula of words, nor indeed in single acts, 
 but in the acquisition and observance of habits 
 which were founded on trust in God, a dwelling 
 with Christ, consideration of others and forgetful- 
 ness of self; of faith, of sacrifices for faith, of 
 punctuality, neatness, industry, fidelity, truth, 
 kindness, charity, and in painstaking in practicing 
 every virtue that went to make up holy living ; to 
 her mind it was something which, viewed as an 
 attainment or an example, was to be not spoken or 
 read, but lived. Those who knew her best have 
 rarely known, in life or biography, a human 
 character whose every affiliation was so with what 
 was holy ; whose every withdrawal was so from 
 what was sullied, or which could more worthily or
 
 82 Emily Sanford Billings. 
 
 signally have share in the beatitude, " Blessed 
 are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." 
 " O ye lilies and other white harbingers of spring, 
 the grace of the fashion whereof is so often 
 and so exquisitely culled by art to be symbols 
 of unspotted purity, what can ye show of silent 
 flowering in the white freedom from all that as- 
 soils, which noble woman cannot much better 
 show herself?" 
 
 Ever had she loved prayer. It was always our 
 habit, after we had retired to our chamber, to close 
 the day with the Lord's Prayer, the little " Now 
 we lay us down to sleep," which the dear lips of 
 our mothers had respectively taught us, followed 
 by an oral, spontaneous prayer, which was a little 
 mirror wherein was reflected and held up to Him 
 who seeth in secret the image of our souls' in- 
 most, highest daily needs and yearnings. After 
 the commencement of her sickness in February, 
 she seemed to delight more and more in our joint 
 evening outpourings. She seemed to look back- 
 wards and forwards to them with a satisfaction 
 which showed they had for her sustaining power. 
 During the early summer, while speaking to that
 
 Outreachings Towards Heaven. 83 
 
 loved friend, to whom she wrote the longing 
 letter about New Haven, of the blessings which 
 during her illness had been vouchsafed to her, 
 she remarked, "and now Faith has come" In 
 New Orleans, in New Haven, and in New- York, 
 she was eager to hear the Scriptures read. With 
 especial fondness did she love to linger on those 
 portions which gave the words of Jesus most 
 of all His sayings as rendered in the mellifluous 
 accents of St. John. All summer, after the Bible, 
 the book which was her favorite was Canon 
 Farrar's " Life of Christ." 
 
 During a portion of her last two weeks on earth 
 there was with us that friend, bound to her by the 
 double tie of early instruction and long and unre- 
 servedly enjoyed intimacy, whose prayerful minis- 
 trations were so touchingly appreciated by the then 
 consciously dying, uncomplaining sufferer. That 
 friend thus relates what she said : 
 
 " ' I have learned to meet each day with its bur- 
 den of suffering, as it comes, one day at a time, 
 trusting in the Lord.' In a time of critical decis- 
 ion a friend repeated the passage, ' Commit thy 
 way unto the Lord and He shall bring it to 
 ii
 
 84 Emily Sanford Billings. 
 
 pass.' Quick as thought, she said: ' You have 
 omitted the best part, "trust also in Him," ' and 
 then repeated the whole correctly." 
 
 The same friend adds : 
 
 "The special requests to be made in the brief 
 prayers of the sick-room evinced a faith that was 
 childlike and inspiring. What she needed most 
 was to be asked for as tho' it would be given." 
 One instance of this kind will live in the hearts of 
 survivors : after a weary, sleepless night, followed 
 by a morning of utter restlessness, she called for 
 a prayer: "Pray for sleep now" Her voiced 
 " Amen " was followed quickly by folded hands, 
 closed eyes, and peaceful slumber. At intervals, 
 the eyes opened, and those who saw her will not 
 soon forget the grateful, peaceful smile, followed 
 again and again by quiet sleep. The next day 
 she had "something to say " when alone with her 
 friend, who shared her secret ; it was her wish to 
 testify thus : 
 
 " Never, in all my life, have I known so wonder- 
 ful an answer to prayer; the sleep came so quickly," 
 she said with emphasis, " it made God seem near, 
 not far."
 
 Putting Aside the Earth. 85 
 
 Several days before her death, she seemed to 
 physicians, to friends, and to herself to be dying. 
 With serenely composed fidelity of affection and 
 with unfaltering trust, she took leave of friends 
 and of him who was in death, as he had been in 
 life, her other self. 
 
 With pious gratitude, with resignation so sweet- 
 ly and purely unselfish that it was a literal renun- 
 ciation of self, she culled, as from a garden, from 
 our happy life, a bouquet of blissful memories, and 
 handed it to me with the glory of that which is to 
 be in her voice and look and manner. Then, with 
 the supreme and shining care with which she had 
 crowned my life, lovingly and with the exultation 
 of saints when close to Heaven, she commended 
 to me, as " the one thing in life, preparation to 
 meet God." When (my one great hope of her 
 recovery so hard to be lost all gone) my 
 agony could be neither repressed nor hidden, she 
 said to me very gently, but with the pathos and 
 faith of one who saw the realities of Heaven, 
 not the vanishing scenes of Earth, and with a 
 thorough subordination of supremest human love 
 to a love for the Saviour ever transcendent :
 
 86 Emily Sanford Billings. 
 
 "My darling, my Saviour calls me, you must 
 let me go to Him." 
 
 From this time to that of the deep sleep which 
 by eight hours preceded death, she seemed filled 
 throughout her whole being permeated with 
 a peace which was the overshadowing power of 
 the Spirit world, which illumined her countenance, 
 gave it a radiance like that of the face of Moses 
 when he descended from the mount after a direct 
 and visible communion with God. 
 
 It was a transfiguration a borrowing from a 
 swiftly coming beatification the rays of a dawn- 
 ing day, " whose waking was to be supremely 
 blest." Her face, like that of the first martyr, 
 " was as it had been the face of an angel." Like 
 him, too, she said : " Lord Jesus, into Thy hands 
 I commit my spirit." She had been permitted to 
 look across the dark waters, into which she was 
 entering, upon the glories of Heaven with a near- 
 ness of vision which caused them to be not only 
 revealed by dying words, but also reflected from 
 dying features. 
 
 Thus, on January 3d, the first Sabbath of the 
 year, amid the hush which precedes the dawn, with
 
 "As it had been the Face of an Angel." 87 
 
 expiring breath, even " from the twilight of eternal 
 day," still whispering half from Earth, half 
 from Heaven to a low-bent, unweariedly and 
 fondly attentive ear a final attestation of her love, 
 went forth she, the delicately fashioned, sensitively 
 shrinking one, with the boldness of the long-tried 
 warrior, and the trust of the martyr, into the mys- 
 tery of death and to the circle of waiting, glorified 
 ones. 
 
 It was not merely that this beloved one was in 
 all this 
 
 " So calm and meek, 
 So softly worn, so sweetly weak, 
 So tearless, yet so tender kind." 
 
 It was not merely that with the shortness of 
 breath came those gleaming flashes of thought 
 and those deep, quickly utterecf impassioned words 
 of affection, like the rich staccato notes in music, 
 that will be remembered so fondly in connection 
 with her death. 
 
 But her patient endurance of protracted illness 
 and excruciating pains the fortitude, the heroism 
 with which she underwent danger her suffering
 
 88 Emily Sanford Billings. 
 
 the pangs of many martyrdoms with naught but 
 smiles the sweetness with which she forgot her- 
 self in remembering, even in her agony, those she 
 loved the composure and resignation at the con- 
 scious approach of death her faith in her 
 Saviour and her undimmed hope of immortality ; 
 these sublime manifestations touched and melted 
 even the hearts of strangers, and made the naked 
 walls of the room in the Sanitarium where she 
 died to glow with an effulgent light that would 
 have rendered the colors of all Earth's artists pale 
 and ineffective. Sorrowing, desolated hearts, in the 
 midst of their anguish, felt the throb of admiration 
 up to that time unknown, that human nature could 
 be so grandly and richly endowed, and in its final ex- 
 tremity, by its absorbing and trustful devotion to 
 what is holy, could so subdue and command. Her 
 life, from beginning to end, was one piece of rav- 
 ishing music, ever varying, ever delighting, rich 
 in its contrasts, sweet in its harmonies, interpreted 
 and enjoyed most by those most pure, most unsel- 
 fish, most loving, but melting, swaying, enthralling 
 all whose ears caught its deep and high diapasons, 
 gathering fullness of note as character became
 
 - 
 
 "For so He giveth His Beloved Sleep." 89 
 
 grander, and, as she grew into the full proportions 
 of her magnificent womanhood, swelling out into 
 loftier strains made up of more ample chords, and, 
 toward the close, mellowing and becoming more 
 and more sweet, finally falling in softest, receding 
 cadences beyond Earth's silence among Heaven's 
 choral symphonies. 
 
 Our loved one's funeral was from that dear old 
 house in Temple street, which was the home of 
 her childhood and the shrine of her maturer years. 
 The Rev. Burdett Hart spoke touchingly in fitting 
 words of faithful narrative, which could not but be 
 those of high and tender eulogy. There was the 
 reading of the sweetest of Mrs. Browning's soul's 
 outpourings, her rendering of the Psalmist's " He 
 giveth His beloved sleep," which had been so often 
 read to and by her, and which was so dear to her. 
 The hymn, "Asleep in Jesus," so precious to her, 
 was sung to a tune associated by us with youthful 
 days, preparatory for life a tune composed for 
 the sweetest of Moore's rhythmical compositions. 
 Prayer was offered by President Porter, who had 
 united us in marriage. Then forth from the house 
 where had been so zealously and piously gathered
 
 9<D Emily Sanford Billings. 
 
 and preserved the memorials of childhood and of 
 dear ones, living and departed, and which was so 
 filled with the traces of her taste and culture, we 
 bore that loved form beneath the Gothic arches, 
 bereft of their verdure, and gently laid it in the 
 tomb where slumbers the dust of her kindred, 
 loved by her with such devotion ; and, with a 
 weight of sorrow that made our limbs totter like 
 those of infancy and extreme old age, we turned 
 to strive to face the duties of life, from which had 
 gone the presence whose brightness and sweet- 
 ness and inspiration will be missed and longed for 
 with the pang of unsatisfied hunger and thirst, 
 till we, ourselves, go down to the slumber of 
 silence and to the awakening and to the reunion 
 beyond. 
 
 And so, O Holy One, kneeling beside a hearth 
 whose fire Thou hast put out, we lift weary hands 
 to Thee and we pray : Thou who, though Thou 
 wast tKe Resurrection and the Life, and though 
 Thine eyes had gazed upon the fullness of im- 
 mortality before the world was, nevertheless didst 
 from those eyes shed tears at the grave of mortal 
 friend, and thereby didst forever honor and hal-
 
 "Out of the Depths unto Thee, O Lord." 91 
 
 low grief for the loved and loving dead ; be Thou 
 pitiful to us, whose grief, though it fills the height 
 and length and breadth and depth of our whole 
 being, is not greater than the measure of the love- 
 liness of our dead. We hear Thy voice yet being 
 borne down the ages, from that upper chamber, 
 in accents still tremulous with tender solicitude 
 for Thy loved ones, about to be desolated by 
 Thine own death, saying: "I will not leave you 
 comfortless," and "I pray for those also, who, in 
 all coming time, shall believe on My name." 
 Redeem this Thy promise to us as we quiver and 
 writhe under the chariot wheels of Thy chastening 
 Providence, and strive, through thick and fast fall- 
 ing tears, to see not wrath, but love. 
 
 Enable us to say, not as ending a vain struggle, 
 but with the sweet spirit of obedient children, 
 "Thy will be done." Thou who hast taught us 
 the capacity of the soul for suffering, by taking 
 her who was the grace and joy of life, fill the ex- 
 tended void with the power of the Saviour's Pres- 
 ence and with the peace given by Him. We 
 thank Thee for the measureless blessings of the 
 companionship and love of one possessing such an 
 12
 
 92 Emily Sanford Billings. 
 
 assemblage of exalted qualities and for the sacred 
 hope of reunion with her ; may our grief not ex- 
 pend itself in selfish repinings, but rather find 
 expression in the imitation, to the extent of our 
 ability, of her shining virtues. May the influence 
 from her unfaltering allegiance to the right, 
 blended with that of her tenderest love for us, 
 continually beat in our lives like pulses in our 
 veins and move us on to noble ends. Grant us 
 faith and strength wherewith to perform all life's 
 duties with courage unabated by reason of great 
 sorrow. May we ever heed her final admonition. 
 May we "live disinterestedly, live for immortal- 
 ity," and " whatever of riches, or renown, or joy, 
 or affection we would rescue from final dissolu- 
 tion, may we lay up in God." 
 
 O suffering, reigning Christ, Man of Sorrows, 
 God of Love, Saviour of the dead and the living, 
 we pray Thee, by thy Crown of Thorns and Thy 
 Crown of Glory, that through Thy grace we may 
 so walk with Thee on the earth, to such a degree 
 keep pace with our dead in their unfettered prog- 
 ress, and so daily and hourly grow in wisdom and 
 worship and charity, that when we awake in Thy 
 likeness we may not fail of their companionship !
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 Announcement of her death in the New Orleans Picayune, 
 January 4, 1886. 
 
 DEATH OF MRS. E. C. BILLINGS. 
 
 THE sad announcement was made yesterday, 
 by telegram, to friends in this city, from 
 Hon. E. C. Billings, Judge of the United States 
 District Court, that Mrs. Billings had died in 
 New York City at half-past two o'clock yesterday 
 morning. Mrs. Billings had been ill for some 
 time, and her demise was not unexpected. This 
 estimable lady was well known and greatly es- 
 teemed in this city. Her amiable disposition, 
 bright intelligence, and gentleness of manner 
 endeared her to all with whom she came in con- 
 tact. The news of her death will be received with 
 
 93
 
 94 Appendix. 
 
 real sorrow by the residents of this city, who 
 recognized her admirable qualities, and Judge 
 Billings will have their warm sympathy in his 
 great affliction. 
 
 The funeral will take place on Wednesday, in 
 New Haven, Conn., of which city the deceased 
 was a native. 
 
 Orders of the United States Courts, sitting in New 
 Orleans, out of respect to her memory. 
 
 UNITED STATES CIRCUIT COURT. 
 [Judge DON A. PARDEE.] 
 
 r I ^HE court being advised of the death of Mrs. E. 
 A. C. Billings, wife of the Hon. E. C. Billings, 
 United States District Judge of this district, one of 
 the Judges of this court, it is ordered that the causes 
 set for to-day be continued until to-morrow, and 
 that the court be adjourned in respect to her 
 memory and as an expression of sympathy and 
 condolence with our colleague.
 
 Appendix. 95 
 
 UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT. 
 [Judge ALECK BOARMAN, presiding.] 
 
 ON opening of the court yesterday, Mr. J. W. 
 Gurley, Assistant United States Attorney, 
 suggested the death of Mrs. E. C. Billings, wife of 
 Hon. Edward C. Billings, Judge of this court, and 
 thereupon moved, as a mark of sympathy in his 
 bereavement, and of respect for her memory, that 
 the court be adjourned. Mr. William Grant hav- 
 ing seconded the motion, on behalf of the bar, in 
 brief and appropriate terms, his Honor, Judge 
 Boarman, expressing his full concurrence in the 
 propriety of the motion, ordered that the court be 
 adjourned.
 
 g6 Appendix. 
 
 Obituary Notice published in the New Orleans Times- 
 Democrat, January 31, 1886. Communicated anony- 
 mously from Hartford, Conn. 
 
 EMILY SANFORD BILLINGS. 
 
 [ Communicated. ] 
 
 DIED, in New York City, Jan. 3, 1886, Mrs. 
 Emily Sanford Billings, wife of Judge 
 Edward C. Billings, of New Orleans, La., and 
 daughter of the late Hervey Sanford, of New 
 Haven, Conn. 
 
 It seems fitting that more than the announce- 
 ment of the death of this gifted woman should 
 find a place in your columns. For, in New Orleans, 
 where Mrs. Billings spent the winter months, her 
 gentle courtesy and rare intelligence were enjoyed 
 by many appreciative friends. 
 
 In her earlier married life, as the wife of Capt. 
 Armstrong, she will be remembered as a favorite 
 among the brilliant men and women of naval 
 circles, at the different navy yards where her hus- 
 band was stationed.
 
 Appendix. 97 
 
 At New Haven, Mrs. Billings's birthplace, and 
 where she passed her early days, she greatly en- 
 deared herself to kindred and friends by the 
 fidelity of her attachments, and the talents and 
 accomplishments which made her the congenial 
 companion of literary men and women. Her loyal 
 heart delighted in the memories and associations 
 which made the old home under the historic elms 
 particularly dear ; and to this shrine came many 
 distinguished men and women to enjoy the grace- 
 ful hospitality and interchange of thought which 
 will never be forgotten. 
 
 It did not seem to lookers-on that the great 
 happiness of mutual devotion which character- 
 ized Mrs. Billings's married life was soon to 
 be severed. Existence was dear to her affec- 
 tionate nature, and she knew it was given her 
 as a blessing for others. An ample fortune 
 set no limits to the pleasures of travel, benev- 
 olence, or the pursuit of knowledge, and upon 
 two homes are left the impresses of her taste 
 and refinement. 
 
 So oft had ever- watchful care averted the dan- 
 gers which threatened the delicate organization
 
 98 Appendix. 
 
 which Mrs. Billings inherited, that friends hoped 
 against hope, when fewer letters from her pen and 
 sad tidings from others told of the limitations 
 imposed by failing strength. 
 
 Coming North last summer under a physician's 
 care, she sought to disarm the fears of anxious 
 friends by the bright smile and cheerful greeting 
 with which she met their expressions of solicitude. 
 Those who were privileged to be with the invalid 
 in her long confinement to her room, felt that it 
 was the chamber of peace ; for weakness and 
 many a pang, which none but the sufferer realized, 
 did but ripen the faith which was so soon to be 
 changed to sight. When medical skill failed in its 
 mission of relief, and the vigilance and devotion 
 of loved ones and faithful nurses no longer availed, 
 Mrs. Billings, with characteristic heroism, decided 
 to place herself under the care of a distinguished 
 surgeon, seeking to prolong life through an ordeal 
 from which many a strong man shrinks. 
 
 At first it seemed that recovery, so prayerfully 
 sought, was to be granted; but the angel of death 
 had but tarried with his message. Ere the early 
 dawn of the first Sabbath of the new year had
 
 Appendix. 99 
 
 touched the horizon, a group of heart-stricken 
 watchers gathered around the death-bed of the 
 beloved wife, sister, friend. But their tender 
 ministrations could no longer detain the soul that 
 heard the voice of God calling to fairer worlds on 
 high. The sensitive spirit feared no evil, safe in 
 the embrace of its Guide and Comforter, and the 
 shadows of death were illuminated by the light of 
 immortality. 
 
 In unison with such a departure are the follow- 
 ing lines of a Christian poet: 
 
 " When the last summons comes to me, 
 
 Like angel whispering, let it be : 
 * The Master comes and calls for thee ! ' 
 
 And friends who final vigils keep 
 With this glad thought will cease to weep : 
 'He giveth His beloved sleep." 1 
 
 Interesting funeral services at New Haven, at 
 which President Porter, of Yale, and the Rev. 
 Burdett Hart officiated, were followed by burial in 
 the old cemetery in which the Sanford tomb stands. 
 
 HARTFORD, CONN., January 23, 1886. ** 
 
 13
 
 ioo Appendix. 
 
 An epitomized characterization of her contained 
 in an extract from a letter, written by Mr. 
 Justice William B. Woods, dated January 
 
 20, 1886. 
 
 " OINCE I saw the form of your dear wife com- 
 O mitted to the keeping of Mother Earth, my 
 mind has dwelt much on her life and character. 
 For intelligence, prudence, and good judgment, 
 she had few equals. Her mind had been trained 
 in the best schools, and she had been cultured by 
 much travel and the best society ; she was a most 
 interesting and delightful companion, and a most 
 truly constant and faithful friend. But her great 
 charm to me was the heavenly sweetness of her 
 disposition."
 
 THE ENGRAVINGS, EXCEPT THE PORTRAIT, ARE THE WORK OF 
 
 MR. ELBRIDGE KINQSLEY, WHOSE ART-POWER HAS BEEN STIMULATED BY HIS ATTACHMENT 
 TO THE FRIEND OF BOYHOOD DAYS, THE AUTHOR.
 

 
 
 
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