Catharine
She was not an infant--an unconscious subject of grace. But the Saviour has led through a long sickness, and through death, a daughter of nineteen years, and has made her, and those who loved and watched her, say, We are more than conquerors. To speak of Him, and not to gratify the fondness of parental love, to commend the Saviour of my child to other hearts, and to obtain for Him the affections of those to whom He is able and willing to be all which He was to her, is the sole object of these pages. Listen, then, not to a parent's partial tale concerning his child, nor concerning mental nor bodily suffering, but to the words of one who has seen how the presence of Christ, and love to Him, can fill the dying hours with the sweetest peace, and even beauty, and the hearts of survivors with joy. Wishing to dwell chiefly on the last scenes of this dear child's life, the reader will not be delayed by any biographical sketch. Nine years before her death, when she was between ten and eleven years of age, she gave the clearest evidence that she was renewed by the Holy Spirit. We had since that time been made happy by the growing power of Christian principle in her conduct, the clearness and steadfastness of her faith, her systematic endeavors to live a holy life, her deep regret when she had erred, and her resolute efforts to improve in every part of her
have a widowed mother, three brothers, and a sister looking to me for
support and sympathy. No, sir, I will struggle and persevere to the last.'
"'Ah,' said he, 'what can you do? Our boat will not live five minutes in
the surf, and you have no other resource.'
"'I will take the boat,' said I, 'and when she fills I will cling to a
spar. I will not die until my strength is exhausted and I can breathe no
longer.' Here the conversation ended, when the captain covered his head
with a blanket. I then wrote the substance of our misfortune in the
log-book, and also a letter to my mother; rolled them up in a piece of
tarred canvas; and, assisted by the carpenter, put the package into a
tight keg, thinking that this might probably be thrown on shore, and thus
our friends might perhaps know of our end."
Men who face Death thus sturdily are apt to overcome him. The gale
lessened, the ship was patched up, the craven captain resumed command, and
in two weeks' time the "Industry" sailed, sorely battered, into Santa
Cruz, to find that she had been given up as lost, and her officers and
crew "were looked upon as so many men risen from the dead." Young
Coggeshall lived to follow the sea until gray-haired and weather-beaten,
to die in his bed at last, and to tell the story of his eighty voyages in
two volumes of memoirs, now growing very rare. Before he was sixteen he
had made the voyage to Cadiz--a port now moldering, but which once was one
of the great portals for the commerce of the world. In his second voyage,
while lying in the harbor of Gibraltar, he witnessed one of the almost
She was not an infant--an unconscious subject of grace. But the Saviour has led through a long sickness, and through death, a daughter of nineteen years, and has made her, and those who loved and watched her, say, We are more than conquerors. To speak of Him, and not to gratify the fondness of parental love, to commend the Saviour of my child to other hearts, and to obtain for Him the affections of those to whom He is able and willing to be all which He was to her, is the sole object of these pages. Listen, then, not to a parent's partial tale concerning his child, nor concerning mental nor bodily suffering, but to the words of one who has seen how the presence of Christ, and love to Him, can fill the dying hours with the sweetest peace, and even beauty, and the hearts of survivors with joy. Wishing to dwell chiefly on the last scenes of this dear child's life, the reader will not be delayed by any biographical sketch. Nine years before her death, when she was between ten and eleven years of age, she gave the clearest evidence that she was renewed by the Holy Spirit. We had since that time been made happy by the growing power of Christian principle in her conduct, the clearness and steadfastness of her faith, her systematic endeavors to live a holy life, her deep regret when she had erred, and her resolute efforts to improve in every part of her