When Rev. W. H. H. Lawhon stood up in the pulpit at the old Friendship church Saturday at the funeral service for Dr. Seawell, he was the picture of a patriarch. His fine, classical face, flowing locks and venerable bearing made a picture for an artist to copy. The fact that he and the deceased were near the same age and reared in the same community and were of kin to each other added interest to the tender words of the minister as he spoke slowly but distinctly and with dramatic effect of their long ago.
The minister’s mother was the aunt of the mother of the deceased. “And,” he said, “when Cousin Mary would come to our house to visit my mother she would bring little Newton along to play with Harrison; and when my mother visited Cousin Mary she took little Harrison along to play with Newton; and in all the 80-odd years of play-time and boyhood and in man’s estate, we were friends without once, so far as I can recall, of a single misunderstanding or hard-feelings of the one toward the other; and we loved each other.”
The little church and the “wildwood” bordering to its eaves, with undulating hills on every side added appropriateness to the Doctor’s favorite song sung by the choir in richest melody, “O, Come to the Church in the Wildwood.”
Not without its pathos and its emotion the playmates of 80 years ago, these friends of more than four-score years, were separated at the open grave in the cemetery of the little Church in the Vale; he place to dear to the childhood of them both; and now more dear to all who hear the story of little Newton and little Harrison and of the friendly exchange of visits of their mothers, and to all who witnessed the simple sweet ceremony of interment of the old Doctor who had requested that his body be brought a hundred miles up the slopes of the state to rest in these quiet shades.
Lead editorial The Moore County News, Carthage, N.C., Thursday, April 8, 1926
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn92074101/1926-04-08/ed-1/seq-2/
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