“Adairsville News.”

October 27 –Died at 5 o’clock this A. M., Miss ELLA GRAY, a daughter of Col. J. W. Gray.  She suffered for two weeks with typhoid pneumonia.  She was rational up to the hour of her death.  Miss Ella was an accomplished young lady, loved by all who knew her.  The bereaved family and friends have the sympathies of our community.

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November 4, 1874
Page 3

IN MEMORIAM.

“Who the gods love die early.”
“Death loves a shining mark.”

In the death of Miss ELLA GRAY, already announced, the sayings of yore find a sad fulfillment.  Just entering upon womanhood; just from college where she had graduated with distinction; full of life, hope and happiness; exuberant in health and spirits; the pride and joy of her father’s house; radiant with intellect, beauty and goodness, she withers as a flower, and, after a few brief days of suffering, her body is consigned to the grave and her spirit ascends to her God.

Her death created a profound impression.  When the sad intelligence was announced in the College where she had so recently graduated, the effect was so overwhelming that the President deemed it necessary, as well as appropriate, to suspend the exercises of the institution for the day.  The anxiously enquiring friends, who thronged her father’s house during her illness, and the mourning multitude, that followed her remains to “the city of the silent,” bore witness how much and how universally she was loved.  The devotion of her friends was a spontaneous tribute to her personal qualities.  Unusually gifted in intellect, enthusiastic and ardent in her temperament, buoyant in her disposition, generous and affectionate and confiding in her nature, and possessing, at the same time, a strength of will that sustained her in all her noble purposes and aspirations, and enabled her to meet cheerfully and bravely the troubles of life herself and to speak words of encouragement to others, it is natural that all who came within her influence should become devotedly attached to her.  The leading features of her character were conspicuous in her last illness, even to its fatal termination.  The intellect that was so bright in health remained unclouded in sickness; her kindliness of heart manifested itself in her constant concern for the comfort of the sorrowing friends that watched round her bed; she was cheerful to the last, even after every hope of recovery had departed, and often  the soft and gentle smile would speak the language which the feeble, faltering tongue could not utter.  The wonderful strength of her character was evinced by the fortitude with which she bore her suffering, and the almost sublime composure with which she received the summons that called her from earth and friends.  Not one word of murmuring escaped her lips in the midst of pain, not a word or a look of fear as she stood face to face with the great destroyer of her race.  When resuscitated on one occasion, from a comatose state into which she had fallen, she remarked that it was useless for her friends to make any further effort to save her—that her death was inevitable, and she thought the sooner it was over the better.  To the heart-broken father and mother, brothers and sisters who had bowed weepingly for days and nights over her couch, watching with intense anxiety every symptom that marked the ebb or flow of life, she whispered words of comfort and hope, and calmly taking leave of each member of her family, she entered the phantom ship that bore her “over the river” to the golden shores beyond.  Her mortal part we have laid in the earth;
“And from her fair and unpolluted flesh
May sweetest violets spring.”
Her friends do not mourn as those who have no hope.  They will treasure pleasant memories of her life, and have the sweet assurance that their loss is her eternal gain—

“tho’ death lies on her, like an untimely frost
Upon the sweetest flower of the field;”

yet they will trust that her spirit is in the land of the blest,

“Where the smile of the Lord is the feast of the soul.”
“So let us live, that when our summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan that moves
To that mysterious realm, where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
We go not, like quarry slaves at night,
Scourged, to our dungeons; but, sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach our graves,
Like one that draws the drapery of his couch
About him and lies down to pleasant dreams.”

A Friend.