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Show MRS. READ'S DEATH. On Monday morning Mrs. Mary Ann Read died in this city. Had she lived two and a half months more she would have been 92 years of age. She had no illness. She died from the weakness of old aee. The heart that had throbbed so long finally grew tired and stopped. She knew all those around her up to a few hours before she ceased to live. Then she sank into a gentle sleep and so rested until the brother of sleep drew near and touched her lips and so her transition came. She lived long enough to see the world revolutionized. revolu-tionized. At her birth the steam engine was but in swaddling bands. She was a middle-aged woman wo-man when the first click of the magnetic telegraph was heard. She was three score years and ten when the electric light first flashed upon her then aged eyes. She was born in England, but she was more than 20 years of age before she first saw a locomotive. When she was born Europe was forty days from New York and San Francisco was six months away. All was changed in this woman's wo-man's life, all save the souls of men and women. Science and invention stop when the realm of soul is approached. Different implements are given us to work with, but the work does not change. It is as it was in the beginning; high souls walk undisturbed in their own spheres. And hers was a high soul. From tho first she consecrated her life to duty and broad cLarity; she took up her burden and bore it with a stately dignity of her own to the end. Away back in the last century she became convinced that tho way to serve God was to make happier her fellow mortals, and to that end the strength of her life was given. Tho result was seen in a family where love ruled; in the neighborhood neighbor-hood her home was one where the heavily burdened bur-dened could always find comfort. So, humbly and grandly she walked, working until her strength failed her, then gently, calmly waited for the rest that came on Monday last, and without fear went to tho reward which awaits the blameless, the world-loving soul. |