Sunday noons
At church , Sunday after Sunday , the simple note requested the prayers of the church and congregation for Mara Lincoln , who was , as the note phrased it , drawing near her end , that she and all concerned might be prepared for the great and last change . One familiar with New England customs must have remembered with what a plaintive power the reading of such a note , from Sunday to Sunday , has drawn the thoughts and sympathies of a congregation to some chamber of sickness ; and in a village church , where every individual is known from childhood to every other , the power of this simple custom is still greater . Then the prayers of the minister would dwell on the case , and thanks would be rendered to God for the great light and peace with which he had deigned to visit his young handmaid ; and then would follow a prayer that when these sad tidings should reach a distant friend who had gone down to do business on the great waters , they might be sanctified to his spiritual and everlasting good . Then on Sunday noons , as the people ate their dinners together in a room adjoining the church , all that she said and did was talked over and over , -- how quickly she had gained the victory of submission , the peace of a will united with God 's , mixed with harmless gossip of the sick chamber , -- as to what she ate and how she slept , and who had sent her gruel with raisins in it , and who jelly with wine , and how she had praised this and eaten that twice with a relish , but how the other had seemed to disagree with her . Thereafter would come scraps of nursing information , recipes against coughing , specifics against short breath , speculations about watchers , how soon she would need them , and long legends of other death-beds where the fear of death had been slain by the power of an endless life . Yet through all the gossip , and through much that might have been called at other times commonplace cant of religion , there was spread a tender earnestness , and the whole air seemed to be enchanted with the fragrance of that fading rose . Each one spoke more gently , more lovingly to each , for the thought of her .