Page:Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (IA memoirsofmargare01fullrich).pdf/158

156 year shall have visited my heart in vain! Make me wise and strong for the performance of immediate duties, and ripen me, by what means Thou seest best, for those which lie beyond. * *

‘My father’s image follows me constantly. Whenever I am in my room, he seems to open the door, and to look on me with a complacent, tender smile. What would I not give to have it in my power, to make that heart once more beat with joy! The saddest feeling is the remembrance of little things, in which I have fallen short of love and duty. I never sympathized in his liking for this farm, and secretly wondered how a mind which had, for thirty years, been so widely engaged in the affairs of men, could care so much for trees and crops. But now, amidst the beautiful autumn days, I walk over the grounds, and look with painful emotions at every little improvement. He had selected a spot to place a seat where I might go to read alone, and had asked me to visit it. I contented myself with “When you please, father;” but we never went! What would I not now give, if I had fixed a time, and shown more interest! A day or two since, I went there. The tops of the distant blue hills were veiled in delicate autumn haze; soft silence brooded over the landscape; on one side, a brook gave to the gently sloping meadow spring-like verdure; on the other, a grove, — which he had named for me, — lay softly glowing in the gorgeous hues of October. It was very sad. May this sorrow give me a higher sense of duty in the relationships which remain.

‘Dearest mother is worn to a shadow. Sometimes, when I look on her pale face, and think of all her grief, and the cares and anxieties which now beset her, I am