So then the teacher turned it out, But still it lingered near, And waited patiently about Till Mary did appear.
All of which is strictly true to fact. It appears that when Mary arrived at the school the teacher had not come yet and so the mischievous Mary hid the pet in her desk, which was a box-like affair. When school began and the children were called out for their classes, the lamb trotted out to have a hand in the proceedings. And this, alas, caused it to be put without the pale.
Now it happened, so strange are the immutable workings of fate, that a young man of 17, a freshman at Harvard, by the name of John Roulstone, Jr., was visiting the teacher at the school that day. The incident inspired him, and a short time after he wrote and sent to Mary the jingle that is so well known. The ideal way to have the thing work out would have been the marriage of Mary and the budding genius. But no, he died a few years later, never having seen Mary again, so far as there is any record.
The strain of being a celebrity was too much for the lamb and after bearing up bravely under it for two years it gave up the struggle, got in the way of a bull on Thanksgiving day, 1816, and was gored. It died an hour later, with its head on Mary’s lap.
In 1835 Mary was married to Columbus Tyler, superintendent of the McClean hospital for the insane at Somerville. She became a matron at the institution, a position she held for 35 years, and several years after her husband died. She died in Somerville, December 12, 1889, and was buried in the Mt Auburn cemetery, near Boston, the same cemetery in which the poet, Longfellow, is buried. The glowing example of what happened to Mary ought to inspire little children to be kind to dumb beasts that they too may some time taste the fruits of immortality.
Besides the lamb’s wool bequest, Mrs Derby left the following legacies to various charitable institutions: Springfield branch of the woman’s board of missions, $300; Norton memorial fund of the same organization, $200; Congregational women’s home mission society of Massachusetts, $300; trustees of the national council of the Congregational churches of the United States, $3000, to be applied to ministerial relief; Massachusetts society for the prevention of cruelty to animals, $200. Certain books from Mrs Derby’s library are bequeathed to the Springfield city library association and the remainder of the estate is to be divided equally between her two nephews, Dr Edward C. Booth of Somerville and Harry D. Booth of Albany, Ill. Charles A. Gleason is named as executor without bond.