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long.
Alas! a far longer and more adventurous journey was required to reunite those loving souls!
The 12th of July, 1849, saw him stricken down, from health to death, by the relentless cholera; and my letter, announcing that calamity, drew from her a burst of passionate sorrow, such as hardly any bereavement but the loss of a very near relative could have impelled.
Another year had just ended, when a calamity, equally sudden, bereft a wide circle of her likewise, with her husband and infant son. Little did I fear, when I bade her a confident Good-bye, on the deck of her outward-bound ship, that the sea would close over her earthly remains ere we should meet again; far less that the light of my eyes and the cynosure of my hopes, who then bade her a tenderer and sadder farewell, would precede her on the dim pathway to that “Father's house” whence is no returning!
Ah, well!
God is above all, and gracious alike in what he conceals and what he discloses;—benignant and bounteous, as well when he reclaims as when he bestows.
In a few years, at farthest, our loved and lost ones will welcome us to their home.
Margaret Fuller, on her part, was fully sensible of the merits of him who has so touchingly embalmed her memory.
‘
Mr. Greeley,’ she wrote in a private letter, ‘is a man of genuine excellence, honorable, benevolent, and of an uncerrapted disposition.
He is sagacious, and, in his way, of even great abilities.
In modes of life and manner he is a man of the people, and of the
American people.’
And again: ‘
Mr. Greeley is in many ways very interesting for me to know.
He teaches me things, which my own influence on those who have hitherto approached me, has prevented me from learning.
In our business and friendly relations, we are on terms of solid good — will and mutual respect.
With the exception of my own mother, I think him the most disinterestedly generous person I have ever known.’
And later she writes: ‘You have heard that the Tribune Office was burned to the ground.
For a day I thought it must make a difference, but it has served only to increase my admiration for
Mr. Greeley's smiling courage.
He has really a strong character.’
In another letter, written at
Rome in 1849, there is another allusion to
Mr. Greeley and his darling boy. ‘Receiving,’ she said,
a few days since, a packet of letters from America, I opened them with more feeling of hope and good cheer, than for a long time past.
The first words that met my eye were these, in the hand of Mr. Greeley: “ Ah, Margaret, the world grows dark with us!
You grieve, for Rome is fallen; I mourn, for Pickie is dead.”
