OBITUARY.

Rev. WM. H. TRAMMELL died [word obscured] 2nd inst. of Typhoid fever, in Athens, Ga., being in his 27th year.

There are many in this community who feel the death of this young man as a personal bereavement.  Reared during the latter years of his youth in our midst, he was known and loved by us all.  Willie was a model boy.  Unvarying dutiful, and gentle, and kind and cheerful his presence never failed to brighten every scene at home.  Light seemed to attend his steps.  Scrupulously conscientious and inflexible upright he commanded, ever in his boyhood, our highest esteem.  In him the natural virtues seemed to be complete.  He reminded us of the young man of whom it was said, “Jesus beholding him, loved him,” so exemplary was his life from his early childhood.  Happily, he had also the “one thing” which that young man lacked.  He loved God “with a pure heart, fervently.”

There was no surprise when, the time having come, he settled the great question of his life-work by a final consecration of himself to the ministry of the gospel.  In December 1874 he became an itinerant Methodist preacher.  In this field, where success requires, not only faith and prayer, but talent and study and work, he achieved in the shortest time a most enviable name.  Guileless and unaffected, loving and devoted, he quickly won a personal popularity that opened the way for the source of his work.   His labors were rewarded with the most gratifying results.  “This beginning of his ministry” was full of promise.  It revealed capacity and marked growth, and gave us assurance that the development of years would be characterized by high honor and the largest usefulness.

But his work has been cut short.  In the freshness and the vigor of his youth he has been taken from us.  However, it is only a TRANSFER.  He has entered upon a higher and broader field.  That expanding intellect has lost none of its activity; that noble heart has lost none of its wealth.  He still lives, to learn, to love, to minister, in a more blessed employ and with a diviner joy he serves Him to whom on earth his child-heart was given.  The life below and the life above are one.

“There is no death!  The dust we tread
Shall change beneath the Summer showers
To golden grain or mellowed fruit,
Or rainbow tinted flowers.

The granite rocks disorganize
And feed the hanging moss they bear;
The forest tress drink daily life
From out the viewless air.

There is no death! The leaves may fall
And flowers may fade and pass away;
They only wait through wintry hours
The coming of the May.

There is no death! An angel form
Walks o’er the earth with silent tread
And bears our best beloved away,
And then WE call them “dead.”

He leaves our hearts all desolate,
He plucks our fairest, sweetest flowers;
Transplanted into bliss they now,
Adore immortal bowers.

The bird-like voice, whose joyous tones
Made glad these scenes of sin and strife,
Now sings an everlasting song
Around the tree of life.

Where’er he sees a smile too bright,
Or heart too pure for taint and vice,
He bears it to that world of light,
To dwell in Paradise.

Born unto that undying life,
They leave us, but to come again,
With joy we welcome them the same,
Except their sin and pain.

And ever near us, though unseen,
The dear immortal spirits tread;
For all the boundless universe
Is life ‘THERE ARE NO DEAD.’”

J. T. N.