One of her dearest friends was Commodore Matthew F. Maury, who was connected with the Military Institute in the early years after the war.  On his death-bed his wife asked him if she might bury him in Hollywood near Richmond.  “As you please, my dear,” he said, “but do not carry me through the pass until the ivy and laurel are in bloom and you can cover my bier with their beauty.”  When the burial service was read over him lying in state in the Institute library, Mrs. Preston was not able to venture over the threshold, so she remained in the shelter of the porch, and when the family returned from the funeral she read them the lines she had composed in the hour that they had been gone: 

    THROUGH THE PASS

    “Home, bear me home at last,” he said,
      “And lay me where my dead are lying;
    But not while skies are overspread,
      And mournful wintry winds are sighing.

    “Wait till the royal march of Spring
      Carpets your mountain fastness over,—­
    Till chattering birds are on the wing,
      And buzzing bees are in the clover.

    “Wait till the laurel bursts its buds,
      And creeping ivy flings its graces
    About the lichened rocks, and floods
      Of sunshine fill the shady places.

    “Then, when the sky, the air, the grass,
      Sweet Nature all, is glad and tender,
    Then bear me through the Goshen Pass
      Amid its flush of May-day splendor.”

    So will we bear him!  Human heart
      To the warm earth’s drew never nearer,
    And never stooped she to impart
      Lessons to one who held them dearer.

    Stars lit new pages for him; seas
      Revealed the depths their waves were screening;
    The ebbs gave up their masteries,
      The tidal flows confessed their meaning.

    Of ocean paths the tangled clue
      He taught the nations to unravel;
    And mapped the track where safely through
      The lightning-footed thought might travel.

    And yet unflattered by the store
      Of these supremer revelations,
    Who bowed more reverently before
      The lowliest of earth’s fair creations?

    What sage of all the ages past,
      Ambered in Plutarch’s limpid story,
    Upon the age he served, has cast
      A radiance touched with worthier glory?

    His noble living for the ends
      God set him (duty underlying
    Each thought, word, action) naught transcends
      In lustre, save his nobler dying.

    Do homage, sky, and air, and grass,
      All things he cherished, sweet and tender,
    As through our gorgeous mountain pass
      We bear him in the May-day splendor!