IN the Memoirs of Rev. Legh Richmond, the well-known author of the Dairyman’s Daughter there is an affecting reference to a sudden overwhelming sorrow that fell to the lot of his mother. The beautiful spirit of resignation under this trying dispensation is recorded with filial sympathy by her son, Legh Richmond. The incident referred to was the death of her youngest boy, a child of two years old. Through the carelessness of his nurse the child fell from a bedroom window to the pavement beneath and lived only about thirty hours afterwards. Legh, a boy of six, was passing the spot when his little brother fell, and he took him in his arms to his agonized mother. This is how he described the incident in after years: “I still preserve a very distinct remembrance of the struggle between the feelings of the mother, and the spiritual resignation of the Christian. She passed the sad interval of suspense in almost continual prayer, and found God a present help in time of trouble. Frequently during that day did she retire with me, and, as I knelt beside her, she uttered the feelings and desires of her heart, to God. I remember her saying: ‘If I cease praying for five minutes, I am ready to sink under this unlooked for distress; but when I pray God comforts and unholds me; His will not mine be done.’ Once she said: ‘Help me to pray, my child; Christ suffers little children to come to Him and forbids them not,—say something!’ ‘What shall I say, mama? Shall I fetch a book?’ ‘Not now,’ she replied, ‘speak from the heart, and ask God that we may be reconciled to His will, and bear this trial with patience.’
The day after the child’s death the sorrowing mother took Legh to the bedside of his lifeless brother, and kneeling down she wept for a few minutes and then taking the little hand now cold in death in one of her hands and Legh’s in another, she said: ‘Lord, if it had not been thy good pleasure it had not been thus. Thy will be done! I needed this heavy trial to shew me more of myself, and to wean me from the world. Forgive my sins, O God, and let me not murmur? She then put the dead hand in Legh’s and said: ‘If you love me my child, never forget this, and may I one day meet you both in heaven!'” In after years she told her son that this trial was the greatest shock which her feelings ever received but that she was persuaded that it was overruled by God for her spiritual good. To the end of her life she wore a little locket attached to her watch containing a lock of her darling child’s hair not so much in remembrance of him as a reminder of the Lord’s great goodness to her in the hour of this overwhelming sorrow. The Lord who sweetened Marah’s bitter waters of old is still the same compassionate God as Mrs. Richmond and others can testify.