CHAPTER XL.

MR

THE END AND HOW IT CAME.

"There is a time, we know not when,

There is a line, we know not where."

R. HARDIN'S sixty-eighth spring was less bright to him than its predecessors. Year by year the hopes and ambitions of an exuberant manhood had grown more subdued. Professional success, the honors of office, a wide-spread fame, a comfortable fortune, a happy home-all these and more had attended and crowned his career, and these, undoubtedly, alleviated the burden of life. But age was making inroads on bodily strength and endurance, and the spirits grew less elastic. His gifted and manly sons, whom he had idolized and from whom he had hoped so much, were dead before their time. Rowan, his best beloved, during the previous year had fallen by an assassin's hand in a foreign land.

Old friends, with whom he had started life, were rapidly passing down to "dusty death," leaving him with the sensation of lingering when the banquet of life was done. If the days were not already "few and evil," such a period seemed approaching. But he indulged no idle or senseless repining. "Work while it is day," was the motto on which he had acted all his life. No task was shirked, no duty neglected, no engagement unfulfilled. Yet his habit of revery and selfcommunion grew more marked and of more frequent recurrence.

On the adjournment of the legislative session of 1851-2 he returned home from Frankfort, and resumed his professional labors. On a bright Sabbath day in May he left Bardstown to attend court at Lebanon. His riding-horse inclined to be easily scared, and his saddle-girth was defective. As he was setting out, Mrs. Hardin expostulated with him about incurring the danger of the bad girth, but with a smile and a jocular remark he rode away. He intended to lodge that night with his son-in-law, Dr. Palmer, near Springfield, and so he did. The following morning, in attempting, while mounted, to open a gate that led to the turnpike, the treacherous saddle-girth broke, and he fell to the ground. He was so injured as to be unable to rise. Dr. Palmer,

who had witnessed the accident, hastened to his assistance.

As Doc

tor P. approached, Mr. Hardin looked up from his prostrate position, and, with a smile, repeated the lines from Burns:

"How many lengthened sage advices
The husband frae the wife despises."

As his daughter remarked of this accident, "it was the beginning of the end." By the fall the sciatic and sacral nerves were bruised. His wife brought him home to Bardstown in a carriage, but all that affectionate care and nursing could accomplish under the best medical advice, while prolonging life, afforded no permanent relief. Mr. Hardin soon realized that his recovery was doubtful, and that his concern in the affairs of life drew to a close. His sufferings were great, but were borne with patient and philosophic fortitude. Many weary nights his neighbors and friends watched at his bedside. Among these watchers was one, then a law student of Mr. Hardin-since distinguished by many high offices and now attorney-general of the United States-A. H. Garland. "In his last illness," said Mr. Garland, “I sat up many nights with him, and he was pretty much the same Old Ben he was when well." His negro man, Bill, a faithful and tried domestic, fulfilled to some extent the duties of nurse, which, however, fell chiefly upon Mrs. Hardin. He often interrupted the tedium of confinement and suffering, and illustrated the saying, "the ruling passion strong in death," by some humorous observation or recital.

One night as the weary hours dragged their slow length along, Bill, who aspired to freedom (but to whom freedom would have manifestly been a misfortune), concluded it was an auspicious time to urge his wishes." Mas' Ben," says he, interrupting a protracted silence, "what will become of poor Bill if you should die?" "Ah! Bill, I don't know," answered the sufferer, and the matter dropped. After the lapse of an hour or so, Bill concluded to introduce the subject again: "Mas' Ben, you are mighty sick." "Yes, Bill, I am mighty sick." "I hope," rejoined the negro, "you is going to get well, but I don't know what is going to become of poor Bill if you should die.' "Well, Bill, I can tell you exactly what will become of you; I have already made my will and appointed Tom Linthicum and Bill Johnson, my executors. In a few months after my death, Tom Linthicum will take you to the court-house some day, and there offer you at public sale. There will be and (naming several noted

and

negro traders who bought slaves in Kentucky for the southern market, and whom the negroes dreaded not one whit less than the devil himself), and they will come up and look at you, and feel your arms, and ask after your age and health, and what kind of work you can do, and you will tell them that you are at least twenty years older than you really are, and that you are sick half your time, and forty other lies. Thus Mr. Hardin proceeded to relate all the details of Bill's imaginary sale at public auction to the latter's utter discomfiture. Bill would, undoubtedly, have been reduced to the verge of despair, but in proportion as Mr. Hardin added horror to the picture, in that proportion was Bill convinced that his master intended nothing of the kind. In truth, Bill lived and died among Mr. Hardin's descendants, the yoke of bondage resting on him considerable less heavily than the freedom which war and revolution afterward brought him.

On another occasion Mr. Hardin related a dream to his family, to the effect that he thought he had died and been buried; that six months afterward he had returned to Bardstown, gone to the courthouse, and found court in session, and a will-case on trial. He soon discovered that the controversy was among his heirs-at-law over his own will, which was being contested because of mental incapacity in the testator. He named the counsel in the case, the members of the jury, and called over the witnesses, reciting the testimony of each, repeating, with great gusto, the statements of certain very ignorant witnesses who pronounced the testator of unsound mind. He omitted none of the details of the supposed trial, but the humor of the recital was rather too grim to be enjoyed by his anxious household.

On still another occasion he assembled his children and grandchildren to listen to his will, which he caused to be read. In appointing his executors, he had not designated his son-in-law, Governor Helm, as one of them, of which the latter complained. From time to time, Governor Helm and Mr. Hardin had had their personal relations more or less disturbed by various occurrences. The latter was autocratic, the former independent. But the profound esteem and attachment each felt for the other soon pacified these transient differences. Possibly, a feeling of pique may have caused the omission in the will, but Governor Helm was chagrined and mortified, rather than offended. He felt that it would be construed as indicating a lack of confidence on Mr. Hardin's part in his integrity, which he knew was not his meaning.

He said nothing to Mr. Hardin himself, but when the matter was mentioned by another, Mr. Hardin said he was entirely willing to appoint Governor Helm one of his executors, but to do so would require a codicil, and he had ridiculed and denounced codicils so often in his speeches, that he could not, for a moment, think of adding one to his own will. He suggested, however, to one of his daughters, who manifested anxiety about it, that if she would re-write his will, she might insert Governor Helm's name as one of the executors. This was accordingly done.*

The long hours of suffering brought to his mind the importance of preparing for death. Always a believer in the Christian religion, and in the plan of salvation revealed in the Bible, yet, he had from time to time postponed accepting its terms. He now resolved to do so no longer. He had not only studied the Bible, but had reflected on its great truths profoundly. He called, as a religious adviser on the occasion, Mr. McAllen, the pastor of the Methodist church in the town. Mr. McAllen was of great piety and zeal, but unwisely undertook to deal with Mr. Hardin as a “babe in Zion."

He not only dwelt on the promises of the Gospel, but gave equal, or greater, prominence to the results that would follow their non-acceptance. After one of his visits, Mr. Hardin remarked: "That man means well, but it seems to me that he would accomplish more if he spent longer time talking of the love of the Saviour and less of hell-fire and the devil.”

At length, he professed that saving faith that brings "the peace that passeth understanding." He was received into the membership of the Methodist Episcopal church, South. At his request, a number of his most intimate friends were gathered in his own room, and, with them, he partook of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper.

His frequent and earnest references afterward to his spiritual state, left no doubt of his abiding confidence that the grace and mercy shown to his fathers had been vouchsafed to him. His wife's tireless and hope-inspiring devotion induced him to believe for awhile that he might not only get abroad again, but be restored to health. He so far recovered as to be removed from his bed to an invalid chair, in which he spent a part of each day. He caused a vehicle to be made -so arranged that he could comfortably ride in it and take the air. In anticipation of soon being able to move about unassisted, he provided himself with crutches.

*See Appendix, note F.

But these hopes were of short duration. Fatigue and anxiety, at length overcame the faithful wife. She was seized with a congestive chill, and, while surviving its immediate effects, rapidly declined. On August 4th, she was known to be dying. Mr. Hardin had himself carried to her bedside, and there he remained a dazed and brokenspirited watcher till the end came.

After this event he abandoned all hope of life, and patiently waited for his hour to come. Shortly afterward, he was attacked similarly to his wife, and this, accompanied by his previous injury, and complicated with gastric irritation, rapidly sapped the citadel of life. At this period he was visited by his kinsman, Hon. Martin D. McHenry, who thus refers to it:

"Hearing that he was so seriously afflicted, I went from my home at Shelbyville to see him. I found him rational, composed, self-possessed, and spent the day by his bedside. He talked very freely to me about some business, matters which he wished me to understand, and expressed himself satisfied that he should not recover, but that slowly and surely his end drew nigh. He was always an intelligent and firm believer in the scriptures and in the religion of Jesus Christ, and on the occasion of this, my last interview with him, he spoke of the subject seriously, and as such a man would on such an occasion. He told me he had been visited by the pastor of the Methodist church in the town, that he had conversed freely with him on the subject. He had subsequently sent for the same minister and communicated to him his faith and hope, and said he had requested him to enroll his name as having united with the church. In short, though he made. no emotional professions, he had repented, believed, and trusted, and now believed he was a subject of divine grace."

The members of his own family, who had died before him, had been buried in the cemetery at Bardstown. His father and mother rested in a burial place on the farm in Washington county, where they had first settled in the wilderness. It was the understanding in the family that Mr. Hardin had promised his mother to be buried by her side. As the end drew nigh he became solicitous for the fulfillment of this promise.

The following incident illustrates his filial devotion as well as frame of mind in his last days:

He called his children and grandchildren around his bed, and his daughter-Mrs. Riley-at his request read from the 47th chapter of Genesis, 29, 30, and 31.