Page:A Life of Matthew Fontaine Maury.pdf/46

32 accident as to be able to leave the place where it occurred. The following was one of his last letters written at Somerset, Ohio:— . . . . I hop out on the porch every day to take an airing and to inure myself to the weather. We have a fine snow for sleighing. I hope it will hold; travelling will be much more easy and much less fatiguing. The night, or a few nights before I left home, I pointed out the evening star to Bett and told her when I was gone to look at that and think of me. Not long after they heard of my misfortune the family were looking out upon the evening, and Bettie gazing on the star, her little voice was heard in the tiny prayer, "I pray God to make my papa well." There was a poetry and even a sublimity in this childish fancy, which, at the time and under the circumstances, were very touching. Message after message she sent me, Make haste to get up; go to the window and look at that beautiful star; but never have I been able to see it.

Thinking to keep up the train of poetry in their little minds about that star, I sent word to her and Annie to look at that star and wish for one thing, and whatever they wished for I would bring them. They both wished for cake! So much, you see, for my romance.

In May 1841, Maury, having a home at Fredericksburg, in Virginia, sent his nephew, Dabney Herndon Maury, to Tennessee to bring his parents to live with him; and they went with the family to Washington in 1842, but both died within a year of the removal. The fracture of his leg had seriously affected Maury's prospects in the Navy, and at one time there was ground for the apprehension that he might be altogether incapacitated from active service. At this period he wrote the following letters to his cousins, Mr. Rutson Maury of New York and Miss Ann Maury, in which he reviews his past career.