the earliest days, when hospitality was a necessity, she learned, if ever she needed to learn, to exercise it generously and graciously. Her door was always open to all comers. The poor were never sent empty away, and her friends shared whatever she had with an unlimited freedom. Arbor Lodge was always a gay house. It was a place of dancing, and games, and jollity. The young especially resorted thither with an assurance of welcome and pleasure.

And there was another charity which this good lady exercised, the care and help of the poor. Those whom others did not care for she took as her own charge. There was a poor half-breed Indian boy who had been put out at the school near Nebraska City by his father, but who had been neglected by him; he drifted away from good influences, and at last committed some trifling offense for which he was lodged in jail. The story accidentally came to Mrs. Morton's ears, and at once she set about securing his release and providing him with proper care. She asked no aid in the task but went about from man to man all over the town, getting their signatures to a petition for his discharge, and having gained that she collected money to send him to his father, seven hundred miles away. When a neighbor told her that her servant, a poor motherless girl, aspired to be a teacher, Mrs. Morton adopted the case as especially her own charge. She inspired the girl to educate herself and then to secure a place in the country to teach. When she was suffering excruciating pains in her last sickness she heard that there was a vacancy in the high school in Nebraska City which she thought the young teacher could fill. Dr. E. W. Whitten, her attending physician, was a member of the board of education, and she besought his aid; he discouraged the effort because there were many other applicants who had friends of influence, but Mrs. Morton was not to be put off; indeed in the very fact that the girl was friendless she found reason for her appointment. The evening came on which the election by the board was to be had; the doctor was attending her, but suffering greatly as she was, she refused his services and charged him to hasten to the meeting and tell the members that this was a poor, friendless girl who had educated herself and was worthy of the place; that she would go to them in person and beg the appointment but she was too ill to do so; and from her sick bed she asked this favor of them. When the doctor came the next morning, heedless of her own condition, her first question was, "What

did the board do?" When told that they had unanimously granted her request the expression of gratitude and happiness on her worn and emaciated features told of the self-forgetful, generous nature of the invalid. Her suffering only made her more heedful of others; her approach to the gates of Paradise made her spirit more than ever loving and charitable.

Mrs. Morton was not a highly intellectual lady, she made no such pretensions. Her numerous occupations and her imperious duties in so many directions did not leave her time or strength or inclination. for studies and labors of a severe character; but she was thoroughly intelligent. She kept well up with current literature and with passing events. She was well informed upon the topics which occupied public attention, political, social, and religious, and she discussed them with discrimination and temperance.

The relations of Mr. and Mrs. Morton were singularly happy. It was in their childhood that they plighted their affections, and in their early maturity that they were married. There was too much force and vigor in the wife for the man to outgrow or weary of her. With no separate wish or ambition, but with common purposes and common views of life, its just modes and aims, they were each the complement of the other, and the two together were one. To her her husband was the admirable man; she shared his trials, his hopes, his disappointments, his ambitions, his growth, and rejoiced to be in all good and ill fortune his true helpmeet. To be his wife in all service and affection was her pride and joy. This was the peculiar felicity of a very happy life. And now, just as the hard work was done and the full reward was at hand, the end came. The beautiful house, the perfected homestead, rooms and decorations, trees, flowers, walks, and drives, animals, servants, and friends and sons and husband; memories, charities, friendships, affections, and the dear light of day, just when they were most cherished, were all to be given up. She looked back on all these blessings, not with repining but with devout gratitude to the Giver of all good gifts. She looked forward with the same courage and faith which she bore through life. She always had a perfect contentment with what was given her; she had realized all she aspired to. In her last illness she said: "My sons have never made my hair gray. Very few women have lived so long and so happily in a human home and shed so few

tears as I." It was her habit during her husband's absence to keep a daily diary; the last entry is dated February 2, 1882. She writes: "I am suffering great pain to-day, but perhaps when the trees blossom again and the birds begin to sing I shall be better, but when I look around me and see how comfortable a home I have, I feel very thankful, and had almost as lief be sick as not."

Mrs. Morton, by a fall on the third day of July, 1880, injured her knee. She gave it little attention, and shortly afterward had another misfortune with it. She suffered great pain. The best medical attendance failed to relieve her and the disease progressed rapidly; during her illness prayers were read for her at every service in St. Mary's church, where she was a communicant, the knowledge of which was a great comfort and help to her. Her rector visited her frequently and prayed with her and for her, and administered the help and consolations of the church. A few days before her death she called her husband and her eldest son to her bedside and said: "Let me read the prayer for the sick." She wished to read it herself to express her prayer to her heavenly Father with more fervency. She read it with clear and decided but pathetic and pleading tones, and then committed to him the issue.

The last day was the 29th day of June; she lay in the library, the windows of which open to the east and receive the first light of the coming day. The time was sunrise; the windows were open, and the first warm breath of the morning came in fresh and sweet from the fields and flowers; her breath was drawn with the sound of a lullaby as though hushing a babe to sleep, the same note she had used when quieting her infant children. Joy said: "Paul and Mark cannot get here, they will never see you in life again; won't you send them a kiss by me?" She kissed him twice distinctly and perfectly. It was the last conscious act to send a kiss to each absent son. She closed her eyes and the heart was still. The night was over and the day had come.

The late afternoon of the second day following Mrs. Morton's death, Arbor Lodge was the scene of a striking event which was in harmony with her life. By common consent all business in Nebraska City was suspended and the pall of mourning was upon all the silent and empty streets. About four o'clock the people of the town, and multitudes from every part of the county, and representatives from

all portions of the state took their way toward the desolate home. There were all classes in the company, but most to be observed was the throng of the poor and of those not largely blessed with wordly means. The number of them was very great, and the sorrow of face and tone and manner spoke of a personal bereavement. They to whose wants had for so many years been given kindly and untiring ministries, they whose misfortunes and sorrows had been cheered by words and acts of thoughtful sympathy, they who had seen this life of tender, vigilant, and unselfish service for others, all came to this mansion with their other fellow citizens and fellow mourners for the one common purpose.

It was a June afternoon, and, save in the hearts of the throng of people, all was peaceful and sweet. Her own four sons, Joy, Paul, Mark, and Carl, carried her forth, assisted by four of the near friends of the family. With the setting of the sun she was laid to rest in the cemetery, Wyuka, and the grave was strewn with flowers by the hands of her own boys.

The little field thus consecrated by the sacred dust now deposited in it has been fitly marked. A shaft, twenty feet high and three feet in diameter at the base, has been erected in the midst. It is in the form of a trunk of a forest tree, which has been riven and broken at the top. At its base fitly disposed emblems of the life now ended—a sheet with the music and words "Rock of Ages," the needles and materials of embroidery, the painter's palette, pencils, and brushes, graceful ferns and large lichens, a vase upon its side with broken lilies, and ivy twining to the top. One branch hangs, symbolizing the broken life. Upon the opposite side is the cavity of a decayed knot, in which are three fledglings which have left the nest, while on the top of the trunk, looking down upon her little ones, is the anxious mother, and one other, the youngest of the brood under her wing. The little field. is protected by a fence of stone, the base being a perfect resemblance of rows of stumps of trees cut to a uniform height, upon which are logs lying horizontally as they are laid in a log house.

The whole is symbolic of a life in the new country, in familiar sympathy with nature in her tenderest moods.

The inscription is: Caroline, wife of J. Sterling Morton. Died at Arbor Lodge, June 29, 1881, aged 47 years. She was the mother of Joy, Paul, Mark, and Carl Morton.

MOSES STOCKING.

MOSES STOCKING, of Saunders county, Nebraska, died at his residence, Friday, Sept. 30th, 1881, of paralysis. His wife, all his sons and daughters, except Mrs. White, Oregon, and Mrs. Bosworth, Colorado, were at his bedside.

The following autobiography was written by him, at the request of Geo. S. Harris, Land Commissioner B. & M. R. R.:

To Geo. S. Harris, Esq., Land Agent of the B. & M. R. R. Neb.: SIR-In complying with your request to furnish you a short autobiography of myself, I am aware that I shall lay myself open to the charge of vanity and a desire to become conspicuous on very small capital.

I have no knowledge of the family name or history further back than my grandfather, who was a small farmer and also a tanner and shoemaker in Chatham, and later at Middletown, in the state of Connecticut. His family consisted of three sons and a daughter-my father, born in Feb., 1775, being the youngest. The oldest son, Moses, entered the marine service at the age of sixteen, in the war for independence and fought under the command of the heroic Paul Jones. Every member of the family, so far as I am able to learn, were whigs of the revolution, and gave their aid and sympathy to the party that defied the British throne. This was also true of my mother's family, the Ishams, of Colchester, Connecticut.

In 1809, my father, Reuben Stocking, emigrated to the state of New York, and settled among the hemlocks of the town of New Berlin and county of Chenango, where I was born in April, 1813. After spending in that locality ten years of the very prime of his life, in Feb., 1819, a bankrupt in purse and with a family of ten living children-the three oldest of which were girls, he moved to Monroe county and for three years was a renter. In the spring of 1822, he pushed on to the county of Genessee, and settled upon a tract of wet timbered land. Here commenced such a struggle for life as few families on these fertile and beautiful prairies will at the present day appreciate. In debt for 110 acres of wild land, one-third of which was swamp, no capital, wheat worth 25 cents per bushel, the Erie canal unfin