I was summoned to his death-bed, and arrived two days before his departure.  I found his mind perfectly bright and clear.  He told over again some of his old reminiscences, and indulged in a few of his customary pleasantries.  He spoke of rejoining his beloved Sarah, and his ancient friends William Savery, Nicholas Waln, Thomas Scattergood, and others, with as much certainty and pleasure as if he had been anticipating a visit to Pennsylvania.  Sometimes, when he was much exhausted with physical pain, he would sigh forth, “Oh, for rest in the kingdom of heaven!” But nothing that approached nearer to complaint or impatience escaped his lips.  On the last day, he repeated to me, what he had previously said to others, that he sometimes seemed to hear voices singing, “We have come to take thee home.”  Once, when no one else happened to be near him, he said to me in a low, confidential tone, “Maria, is there anything peculiar in this room?” I replied, “No.  Why do you ask that question?” “Because,” said he, “you all look so beautiful; and the covering on the bed has such glorious colors, as I never saw.  But perhaps I had better not have said anything about it.”  The natural world was transfigured to his dying senses; perhaps by an influx of light from the spiritual; and I suppose he thought I should understand it as a sign that the time of his departure drew nigh.  It was a scene to remind one of Jeremy Taylor’s eloquent words:  “When a good man dies, one that hath lived innocently, then the joys break forth through the clouds of sickness, and the conscience stands upright, and confesses the glories of God:  and owns so much integrity, that it can hope for pardon, and obtain it too.  Then the sorrows of sickness do but untie the soul from its chain, and let it go forth, first into liberty, and then into glory.”

A few hours before he breathed his last, he rallied from a state of drowsiness, and asked for a box containing his private papers.  He washed to find one, which he thought ought to be destroyed, lest it should do some injury.  He put on his spectacles, and looked at the papers which were handed him; but the old man’s eyes were dimmed with death, and he could not see the writing.  After two or three feeble and ineffectual attempts, he took off his spectacles, with a trembling hand, and gave them to his beloved daughter, Sarah, saying, “Take them, my child, and keep them.  They were thy dear mother’s.  I can never use them more.”  The scene was inexpressibly affecting; and we all wept to see this untiring friend of mankind compelled at last to acknowledge that he could work no longer.