Page:Diary of ten years.djvu/23

7 which you, and my father and sister have given, and which are associated in some way or other with all my occupations, whether praying, reading, writing, marking the progress of time, or preparing for eternity; but those tokens of regard which I have received from comparative strangers. I constantly wear a ring whichgave me just before I came away. Poor fellow! he could scarcely speak, I could not articulate a syllable. I trust before this, his anxious and affectionate heart has found rest and peace in wedded life! I dress every day before a glass belonging to a case given me by Miss T.

Instances of Mrs. R's kindness are constantly before me. Poor John Maguire (Joseph's old servant), with tears in his eyes, entreated my acceptance of a handsome dark lantern, which he had had for one and twenty years. It is now suspended in my cabin, and my reminiscences revert with as much gratification to this keepsake of poor John's, as to any other that I see around me. Furlong's kindness and attention appear in several marks of his friendship. A cabin lamp, fowling-piece, and pair of pistols, an apparatus for kindling an instantaneous light, are suspended in my cabin; and when I look at these articles, as well as at the books, and many other of his gifts, I am filled with gratitude at his disinterested friendship; but I shall not dwell more upon recollections. I cannot dare to indulge in the "solemn sorrows of suffocating sensibility" as Bridgetina Botherum says, else I should unnerve my mind when it has need of all its fortitude; and yet, my dear brother, I cannot avoid giving you the rythmical produce of my waking thoughts last night, or rather at peep of day this morning, soon after the death of Poor Lass. My melancholy must have vent, aud though there is sad wastry, as Rose Anne would say, as applies to paper, yet, under existing circumstances, I may be allowed to play the fool, if it were only for my beloved sister's sake. She knows when the fit comes on, how hard I find it to resist. Was