Laura E. Richards, Maud Howe, Florence Howe Hall, Julia Ward Howe, 1819-1910, in two volumes, with portraits and other illustrations: volume 1

“‘ [117] very happy now: if one has one's parents and one's husband, what more can one want?’ And presently, ‘The angels have charge of me now, mamma and Mimy.’ She said to me: ‘What does the Lord want to kill me for? I am dying.’ I said, ‘No, my darling, you are going to get well.’ She said: ‘Remember, if anything happens to me, you two must stay together.’ ... A little later Michael and I were alone with her. She began to wander, and talk as if with reference to her club or some such thing. ‘If this is not the right thing,’ she said, ‘call another priestess;’ then, very emphatically: ‘Truth, truth.’ These were her last words.”

“My darling should have been forty-two years old this day....”

A few days later she writes to Mary Graves:--

“I am not wild, nor melancholy, nor inconsolable, but I feel as America might if some great, fair State were blotted from its map, leaving only a void for the salt and bitter sea to overwhelm. I cannot, so far, get any comfort from other worldly imaginings. If God says anything to me now, he says, ‘Thou fool.’ The truth is that we have no notion of the value and beauty of God's gifts until they are taken from us. Then He may well say: ‘Thou fool,’ and we can only answer to our name.”

The Journal says:--

“This is the last day of this sorrowful March which took my dear one from me. I seem to myself only dull, hard, and confused under this affliction. I pray God to give me comfort by raising me up that I may be ZZZ¹ ”