190 BOYS OF THE BIBLE.

shall fecl in the deepest gloom of your sorrow, ‘‘as one whom
his mother comforteth.”

In closing this romantic story of Rizpah and her patient
vigil on Gibeah’s hill, the tender words John Quincy Adams
—one of America’s earliest and greatest statesmen—spoke
concerning his revered mother, seems an appropriate quota-
tion:

“My mother was an angel upon earth. She was a min-
ister of blessing to all human beings within her sphere of
action. Her heart was the abode of heavenly purity. She
had no feelings but of kindness and benevolence, yet her mind
was as firm as her temper was mild and gentle. She had
known sorrow, but her sorrow was silent. She was acquainted
with grief, but it was deposited in her own bosom. She was
the real personification of female virtue—of piety, of char-
ity, of ever-active, never intermitting benevolence. O God,
could she have been spared yet a little longer! My lot in life
has been almost always cast at a distance from her. I have
enjoyed but for short seasons and at long, distant intervals
the happiness of her society, yet she has been to me more
than a mother. She has been a spirit from above, watching
over me for good, and contributing by my mere conscious-
ness of her existence to the comfort of my life. That con-
sciousness is gone, and without her the world feels to me
like a solitude.”