The same
kind office was performed for Boyce, and they were saved. Though a
stranger to the Governor, this great-hearted woman tore into strips
her gown, and kindly did the work of the Good Samaritan, in binding up
the wounds of one she did not know, had never before seen, and to
whose rank and character she was equally a stranger; and when she was
floating upon a few planks, at the mercy of the waters, and surrounded
by interminable forests covering the low and mucky shores of Red River
for many miles, where human foot had rarely trod, and human habitation
may never rest--one garment her only covering, and all she could hope
for, until some passing steamer should chance to rescue them, or until
she should float to the river's mouth, and find a human habitation.
She, too, is in the grave, but the memory of this act embalms her in
the hearts of all who knew her. Blessed one!--for surely she who
blessed all who came within her sphere, and only lived to do good,
must in eternity and for eternity be blest, like thousands of others
who have ministered in kindness for a day, and then went to the
grave--in thy youth and loveliness thou wert exhaled from earth: like
a storm-stricken flower in the morning of its bloom, wilted and dead,
the fragrance of thy virtues is the incense of thy memory!
It was long before Governor White was fully restored to sight.
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