I
respect you with all the respect due to a mother. You dont know how I
love you. So I shall remain, your loving child,_--M. FLEMING."
What rich involution of love in the words marked!
Here are some lines to her beloved Isabella, in July, 1811:--
"There is a thing that I do want,--
With you these beauteous walks to haunt;
We would be happy if you would
Try to come over if you could.
Then I would all quite happy be
_Now and for all eternity_.
My mother is so very sweet,
_And checks my appetite to eat_;
My father shows us what to do;
But O I'm sure that I want you.
I have no more of poetry;
O Isa do remember me,
And try to love your Marjory."
In a letter from "Isa" to
"Miss Muff Maidie Marjory Fleming,
favored by Rare Rear-Admiral Fleming,"
she says: "I long much to see you, and talk over all our old stories
together, and to hear you read and repeat. I am pining for my old friend
Cesario, and poor Lear, and wicked Richard. How is the dear
Multiplication table going on? Are you still as much attached to 9 times
9 as you used to be?"
But this dainty, bright thing is about to flee,--to come "quick to
confusion." The measles she writes of seized her, and she died on the
19th of December, 1811. The day before her death, Sunday, she sat up in
bed, worn and thin, her eye gleaming as with the light of a coming world,
and with a tremulous, old voice repeated the following lines by
Burns,--heavy with the shadow of death, and lit with the fantasy of the
judgment-seat,--the publican's prayer in paraphrase:--
"Why am I loth to leave this earthly scene?
Have I so found it full of pleasing charms?--
Some drops of joy, with draughts of ill between,
Some gleams of sunshine 'mid renewing storms?
Is it departing pangs my soul alarms?
Or Death's unlovely, dreary, dark abode?
For guilt, for GUILT, my terrors are in arms;
I tremble to approach an angry God,
And justly smart beneath his sin-avenging rod.
Pages:
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147