------ and the Mayor of Liverpool, was a Baronet, Sir Thomas
Birch.
January 17th.--S---- and I were invited to be present at the wedding of
Mr. J-------'s daughter this morning, but we were also bidden to the
funeral services of Mrs. G------, a young American lady; and we went to
the "house of mourning," rather than to the "house of feasting." Her
death was very sudden. I crossed to Rock Ferry on Saturday, and met her
husband in the boat. He said his wife was rather unwell, and that he had
just been sent for to see her; but he did not seem at all alarmed. And
yet, on reaching home, he found her dead! The body is to be conveyed to
America, and the funeral service was read over her in her house, only a
few neighbors and friends being present. We were shown into a darkened
room, where there was a dim gaslight burning, and a fire glimmering, and
here and there a streak of sunshine struggling through the drawn
curtains. Mr. G------ looked pale, and quite overcome with grief,--this,
I suppose, being his first sorrow,--and he has a young baby on his hands,
and no doubt, feels altogether forlorn in this foreign land. The
clergyman entered in his canonicals, and we walked in a little procession
into another room, where the coffin was placed.
Mr. G------ sat down and rested his head on the coffin: the clergyman
read the service; then knelt down, as did most of the company, and prayed
with great propriety of manner, but with no earnestness,--and we
separated.
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