Parker, Caroline (Engaged)

Miss Caroline Parker, whose long and painful sickness has excited the sympathy of her friends in Evanston, pased quietly away Sunday morning, Jan. 12, at the age of fifty-four. She was a native of the state of New York, one of the younger members of a family of eleven children. Her father had removed to the west, after his family had come to maturity. She, in common with the rest, had inherited integrity, energy and thrift. After the dissolution of the paternal home, she came to live with Mrs. Dr. N.S. Davis, her sister, with whose family she has been for the last twenty-five years, strictly identified. Both the happiness and usefulness of her life found their development in the relation that she sustained to this family, being in every emergency of joy or grief ready to fill a place of needful help. These traits of competency, efficiency and energy endeared her to many outside of her immediate family, and she will long be remembered by her friends in Evanston for her helpful kindnesses. Miss Parker was born of Methodist parentage and her life-long association was with this people. She was an habitual attendant upon the services of this church, and so far as conduct goes to show, was a believer in the doctrines and ordinances of religion, but never openly connected herself with the church. During her illness, after being confined to her room, she asked for the ministrations of Rev. Dr. Vibert, rector of the St. James Episcopal church, being drawn to him as her spiritual leader and guide, in what she now knew to be the close of her earthly life, by the kindness and gentleness of his manner as she had observed it in his attendance upon her sick relatives. She received at his hands the ordinance of baptism and the sacrament of the Lord's supper, and found in his counsel strength and help as she descended into the valley and shadow. As teh outward perished and the inward was renewed day by day, and she left the comforting testimony that "all is bright beyond; I hope it will not be long before I go." With characteristic promptness and attention to details, she made a disposition of all her personal affairs, indicating those to whom mementoes should be given, and then, before she became incapacitated by weakness, prepared her own burial garments. All the arrangements for her funeral srvice and burial were also ordered, and with unselfish regard for the comfort of the family. These are the brightest outlines in the life and death of one to whom the following beautiful tribute has been deservedly paid. Miss Eliza Starr, for many years an intimate friend and neighbor of the family, says: "This woman of fifty-four years had no husband to make "her name honored in the gates," nor "children to rise up and call her blessed" but "Her hands had taken hold of the spindle, and all her domestics were clothed in double garments"; for she was one of the valiant women, from whose large, unselfish heart flowed perpetually deeds of good-will, and even heroic deeds, whenever such were needed; for there was no limit to the swiftness of her foot, or the cunning of her hand when these were called for by friend or neighbor. When to this acrivity came a check as sudden as it was hopeless, we might well wonder how the certainty of months of suffering would be met; but from the moment she laid down her active life, the life of meditation seemed to come to her. She lay often with her eyes closed, not sleeping but, as she said, to shut out this world and the things of this world and prepare for another. This thought fully occupied her mind during the four months she lay upon her bed; and her resignation to the will of God, her patience and courage under extrordinary and prolonged sufferings, were such as to make one feel that the preparation for all this had begun long before. During her illness she wished to be baptised and united herself with the Episcopal communion. Every detail for her burial as well as every souvenir for a friend had been long before arranged, and the only care was to carry out her instructions; and if her hand and step had been untiring , so were the kind hands and feet of those who ministered to her at the [illegible] was as if it had been said," The measure those have given shall be measured to them again, pressed down and running over."