Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. III.djvu/421

Rh for me to part with these friends, thinking, probably, that I might never see them more; my kind physician, my beloved Mary Anne, his wife! And to the last moment they overwhelmed me with proofs of love—I cannot call it any thing else. Foremost among these I reckon the directions which he has given for the management of your health, according to the information I have given him of your state, and the ample supply of homœopathic medicines which he has provided both for you and me.

Thus he and she—ah, my Agatha, there are little affectionate motherly or sisterly attentions and kindnesses which are invaluable to the stranger in a foreign land, and which affect me more than large gifts; and I have to thank her for such services, as well as many other motherly-hearted women, not only in America but in Cuba! When think how their hands laboured for me, how they cared for me to the most minute details, I feel that I must press those hands to my heart and to my lips. I shall always see in memory her kind, beautiful countenance, his grave eyes, with their glance so full of sentiment, and I shall most certainly behold them again at—the resurrection. It cannot be otherwise. The expression of such spirits cannot die.

“There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body,” says St. Paul.

Among the friends who met me in New York was Professor de V., from Charlotte's Ville. But no longer full of cheerfulness. His beautiful home was now a house of mourning. His young wife, my beloved hostess there, had died in giving birth to her first child. I was most sincerely grieved for him and his motherless infant.

I spent some days at New York in making a closer acquaintance with that portion of the life of the great city which belongs to its night-side, to the dark realm of shadows and of hell, as it exists on the earth. I wandered through it, however, accompanied by an angel of light.