Then she followed the procession which escorted the bodies of these martyrs to their home.
Who shall speak the agony of the ensuing hours! Two bodies, beloved in life, beloved still in death, were resting in that stricken house. While Emeline and Drusilla, and the little daughters, all robbed of their defenders, wept and moaned in a torture such as seldom comes to womankind.
As she sobbed and prayed, Emeline took from the bosom of her husband a tiny, blood-stained packet. It contained a little flower of hair, Drusilla's, her own and Will's; and also those slips of paper--the hand and heart. The morning when Will first went out to battle, she and Drusilla had pressed this packet upon him and bade him wear it in his bosom.
Poor, disappointed creatures! What can the love of women avail against the hate of men? Nothing.
Emeline pressed the moist hair flower into Drusilla's hand; but the heart and hand, crimson-flecked now, she placed next her own heart. They had been the sign of love in youth and rosy life; they should be cherished to remind her of the immortality which death can bring.
This was almost the end. Emeline's brave boy, Will Anderson, who had given her his fidelity in childhood, had bestowed upon his country his fidelity in manhood. To the oppressed of his countrymen he had extended the help of his strong _hand_; in their defense his _heart_ had been pierced by a bullet. He and his son, Augustus, were buried at Nauvoo.
A time of anxious toil ensued; for even through the darkest tragedy runs a thread of the commonplace. And in the midst of the anxious commotion and labor Emeline and Drusilla became separated. They never met again in this life; and from that hour Drusilla's history is to this writer unknown.
Emeline Anderson lived to emigrate to Utah and to receive the blessings of this fair land. She accepted through the remainder of this life the name of a worthy man, and she reared a third daughter. She carried with her until the hour of her death the tear-stained, blood-stained _heart and hand_; and when she was no more, these hallowed shreds of paper passed into the possession of her children.
This is a life sketch. Those of the characters who have gone seem now not to have been torn away by the rude hand of death, but to have faded gently into the past, leaving their looks, their love, their loyalty for their descendants.