The very many letters of true sympathy which reached me after my husband's death were put away in boxes, and kept for me till I was well enough for my daughter to read them to me. Among these were many from clergymen of all denominations and of all ranks in the great army of God. As I lay with closed eyes listening to the message of these hearts I did not know I seemed to be back in the little church at Cressing, and to hear my father's voice through the mists of remembrance, saying: "And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is _Charity_." ...
Among our many wedding presents was a charming little alabaster clock from my husband's sister, Emily Dickinson. It was a ship's "wheel," and we were very gay over its coming, disputing as to which of us should henceforth be the "man at the wheel." Parnell's mother also was very sweet and kind to me, sending me several much prized letters. Other members of my husband's family also wrote very kindly to me, and I can still see { 320} his tender smile at me as he saw my appreciation of his family's attitude.
The presents we liked best, after Mrs. Dickinson's clock, were the little humble offerings of little value and much love sent by working men and women, by our servants, and by others of far countries and near. Parcels arrived from the four quarters of the globe, and many were beyond recognition on arrival, but the fragments were grateful to me as bearing a message of true homage to my King.
Of other feeling there was little among these wedding gifts, though one evening my eldest daughter who was with me, remarked casually to me that she had confiscated a newly arrived "registered" parcel addressed to me. "Oh, but you must not," I exclaimed, "I want them all!" But she answered gloomily that this parcel had contained a mouse, and "not at all the kind of mouse that anyone could have wanted for days past." So I subsided without further interrogation.
Once when Parnell and I were staying at Bournemouth we became very fond of some old engravings hanging in our hotel sitting-room, illustrating "The Dowie Dens of Yarrow," and now, through these fighting months in Ireland, we used this old ballad as a medium for private telegrams, as we could not be sure they would not fall into other hands. The idea took root when he first left me to attend what I feared would be a hostile meeting in Ireland. He had wired the political result to me, but had not said how he was feeling. I telegraphed to him: "O gentle wind that bloweth south," and promptly came the reply to me: "He fareth well."