p. 175 | A. N. CURTISS by A. N. Curtiss

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 26, 1864

A. N. CURTISS

By A. N. Curtiss

From Sister Curtiss.

BRO. WHITE : I write to inform you of the sudden death of my husband, which occurred on the 25th of March. His health had been slowly failing for the last three years, but for two months before his death had failed very fast.

We had bought a small place at West Monroe, and were moving there. When I wrote to you to change the address of our papers, he was gone with the third load of goods. When he returned, how our hopes and prospects for this world were blighted! He did not know his home, wife, nor children. His horses turned up to the gate and stopped, but he reined them back and drove on. I saw him and was alarmed, and got one of my neighbors to go after him. He overtook him about half a mile from home, but could not persuade him that he had passed his house. He took the lines from him and brought him home.

He was in awful distress in his head and stomach. We employed a physician, and he pronounced it congestion of the brain, and said he could live but a few hours unless he got help, and the best thing he could do was to bleed him. This placed me in a trying place. I knew Mr. Curtiss had condemned that practice for years, and now must I consent to have him bled! I could not, I did not. Most of his mother's family were present, and for their satisfaction he was bled. When completely exhausted from exercise and pain, he would drowse for a little while, and during one of these spells they bled him so he did not know it; but a few moments after, he roused up, and seeing some blood on the bed, looked astonished and said, "What in the world!" It seemed to me the truth flashed across his mind, but it was only for a moment. He never came to himself to speak one word of consolation to his afflicted family. We felt that we needed his advice as to our future course; but this, too, was denied. He soon sank away; lived but two days and three nights after he returned. But we mourn not as those who have no hope. He was an every-day Christian. The worth of his example cannot be told. His religion was manifest in his business always, and the general expression is, "It is well with him."

I need not tell you how we miss him at morning, noon, and eve, around the table and the family altar. Oh! how we miss him there. The promises of the God of the widow and fatherless are very precious; but I feel a loneliness that I cannot express, and none but the widow can know.

Pray for us, that this mysterious dispensation of God's providence may be sanctified to our good, and that I may have wisdom to train up my children in the fear of the Lord. My youngest is a little boy two years of age.

Yours in affliction.

A. N. CURTISS

Camden, N. Y.