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“Before breakfast went into Chev's room, so sweet and peaceful.... I laid my lace veil, my bridal veil, upon the head of his bedstead.... In place of my dear husband I have now my foolish papers.
Yet I have often left him for them.
God accept the poor endeavor of my life!”
On the day after the funeral she writes: “Began my new life to-day.
Prayed God that it might have a greatly added use and earnestness.”
And several weeks later, after the memorial meeting in his honor:--
“Yesterday seems to have filled the measure of the past.
To-day I must forward in the paths of the future.
My dear love is sometimes with me, at least as an energizing and inspiring influence, but how shall I deserve ever to see him again?”
The paths of the future!
She was to tread them with cheerful and willing feet through many long years, never wholly losing the sense of companionship with her good comrade.
She devoted the spring of 1876 to the writing of a brief memoir of him, which was printed in pamphlet form and in raised type for the use of the blind.
With the latter object in view the memoir was necessarily brief.
The labor of condensing into a small space the record of a long and super-active life was severe, but it was the tonic she needed.
The days of quiet at Green Peace, the arduous work, with a page of Greek or a chapter of Baur for relaxation, brought mind and nerves back to their normal condition.
The work speaks for itself.
As it is little known today
Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston and New York. 1916.
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