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July 13. Dr. Rogers here, our first meeting for some ten years; enjoyed seeing him, but felt something of that “secret pain” described in Longfellow's Driftwood Fire. . . . P. M. rowed to Gloucester and back against wind and sea . . . the best pull I have had for years.
July 28.
Rowed to Gloucester and Ten Pound Island—finding the descendants of Francis Higginson's “sweet single rose.”
In October Margaret went home before her father, and he thus described a day without her:—
The day seemed a concentrated solitude and partial death without Margaret and every little starfish and sea urchin she scattered seemed a part of her and too sacred to be touched.
It brought home with terrible vividness the possible desolation of a life without her, and by sympathy, more remotely, the blow that it will be to her ardent nature on that day when she must lose me. That is the only drawback on a long delayed parentage—that one cannot as in youth look forward to a long lifetime within reach of a child.
For me it may be something that I shall not live to see her with gray hairs—but for her—The more need to love each other while we can.
