The Wives of The Dead

The following story, the simple and domestic incidents of which may be
deemed scarcely worth relating, after such a lapse of time, awakened some
degree of interest, a hundred years ago, in a principal seaport of the
Bay Province. The rainy twilight of an autumn day,--a parlor on the
second floor of a small house, plainly furnished, as beseemed the
middling circumstances of its inhabitants, yet decorated with little
curiosities from beyond the sea, and a few delicate specimens of Indian
manufacture,--these are the only particulars to be premised in regard to
scene and season. Two young and comely women sat together by the
fireside, nursing their mutual and peculiar sorrows. They were the
recent brides of two brothers, a sailor and a landsman, and two
successive days had brought tidings of the death of each, by the chances
of Canadian warfare and the tempestuous Atlantic. The universal sympathy
excited by this bereavement drew numerous condoling guests to the
habitation of the widowed sisters. Several, among whom was the minister,
had remained till the verge of evening; when, one by one, whispering many
comfortable passages of Scripture, that were answered by more abundant
tears, they took their leave, and departed to their own happier homes.
The mourners, though not insensible to the kindness of their friends, had
yearned to be left alone. United, as they had been, by the relationship
of the living, and now more closely so by that of the dead, each felt as
if whatever consolation her grief admitted were to be found in the bosom
of the other. They joined their hearts, and wept together silently. But
after an hour of such indulgence, one of the sisters, all of whose
emotions were influenced by her mild, quiet, yet not feeble character,
began to recollect the precepts of resignation and endurance which piety
had taught her, when she did not think to need them. Her misfortune,
besides, as earliest known, should earliest cease to interfere with her
regular course of duties; accordingly, having placed the table before the
fire, and arranged a frugal meal, she took the hand of her companion.

"Come, dearest sister; you have eaten not a morsel to-day," she said.
"Arise, I pray you, and let us ask a blessing on that which is provided
for us."

Her sister-in-law was of a lively and irritable temperament, and the
first pangs of her sorrow had been expressed by shrieks and passionate
lamentation. She now shrunk from Mary's words, like a wounded sufferer
from a hand that revives the throb.

"There is no blessing left for me, neither will I ask it!" cried
Margaret, with a fresh burst of tears. "Would it were His will that I
might never taste food more!"

Yet she