Dr. Livingstone asked Dr. Stewart to commend her spirit to God, and along with Dr. Kirk they kneeled in prayer beside her.  In less than an hour, her spirit had returned to God.  Half an hour after, Dr. Stewart was struck with her likeness to her father, Dr. Moffat.  He was afraid to utter what struck him so much, but at last he said to Livingstone, “Do you notice any change?” “Yes,” he replied, without raising his eyes from her face,—­“the very features and expression of her father.”

Every one is struck with the calmness of Dr. Livingstone’s notice of his wife’s death in The Zambesi and its Tributaries.  Its matter-of-fact tone only shows that he regarded that book as a sort of official report to the nation, in which it would not be becoming for him to introduce personal feelings.  A few extracts from his Journal and letters will show better the state of his heart.

“It is the first heavy stroke I have suffered, and quite takes away my strength.  I wept over her who well deserved many tears.  I loved her when I married her, and the longer I lived with her I loved her the more.  God pity the poor children, who were all tenderly attached to her, and I am left alone in the world by one whom I felt to be a part of myself.  I hope it may, by divine grace, lead me to realize heaven as my home, and that she has but preceded me in the journey.  Oh my Mary, my Mary! how often we have longed for a quiet home, since you and I were cast adrift at Kolobeng; surely the removal by a kind Father who knoweth our frame means that He rewarded you by taking you to the best home, the eternal one in the heavens.  The prayer was found in her papers—­’Accept me, Lord, as I am, and make me such as Thou wouldst have me to be.’  He who taught her to value this prayer would not leave his own work unfinished.  On a letter she had written, ’Let others plead for pensions, I wrote to a friend I can be rich without money; I would give my services in the world from uninterested motives; I have motives for my own conduct I would not exchange for a hundred pensions.’

“She rests by the large baobab-tree at Shupanga, which is sixty feet in circumference, and is mentioned in the work of Commodore Owen.  The men asked to be allowed to mount guard till we had got the grave built up, and we had it built with bricks dug from an old house.

“From her boxes we find evidence that she intended to make us all comfortable at Nyassa, though she seemed to have a presentiment of an early death,—­she purposed to do more for me than ever.

“11_th May, Kongone_.—­My dear, dear Mary has been this evening a fortnight in heaven,—­absent from the body, present with the Lord.  To-day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise.  Angels carried her to Abraham’s bosom—­to be with Christ is far better.  Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, ’Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousand of his saints’; ye also shall appear with Him in glory.  He comes with them; then they are now with Him.  I go to prepare a place for you; that where I am there ye may be also, to behold his glory.  Moses and Elias talked of the decease He should accomplish at Jerusalem; then they know what is going on here on certain occasions.  They had bodily organs to hear and speak.  For the first time in my life I feel willing to die.—­D.L.”