“My poor wife, too,--for two years a great sufferer from an internal inflammation,--was happier than I had seen her for many a day, and when I repined or complained about something, said to me, ‘Well, never grumble about such disasters; remember all that we have to be thankful for, and that death has never come amongst us hitherto.’ It was but one week after that we lost him.
“From my heart. I thank you for your sympathy, all the more, too, that you associated your wife in your sorrow for us.
“P.S.--It will be better for me, I believe, that I must work, and work hard; the tired head may help the heavy heart after all.”
“Casa Capponi, Florence, _Oct_. 17, 1863.
“Your kindest of notes was very dear to me at this, the saddest day of my life. My poor boy was taken away almost in a moment. Some internal rupture, followed by great haemorrhage, overcame him, and he sank at once and never rallied even to consciousness.
“The great struggle of my life was his advancement,--to place him in a high and honourable position; and to maintain him there was an effort for which I toiled and laboured till I had parted with the little my years of industry had gathered, sold my copyrights, and left myself penniless, even to the poverty that I could scarcely collect enough to pay the expenses of the churchyard where I laid him. So much for human foresight! All my love and all my tact to be under the small mound of the churchyard!
“They who speak of religious consolation in great calamity often forget that these consolations only appeal to those whose lives have been invariably directed by a religious standard, and that worldly-minded men like myself can no more obtain the benefit of these remedies than they could of any internal medicament which required a course of long persistence. I say this to show that while not insensible to the truthfulness of these counsels, yet that personally they do not apply.
“It is now left me to labour on with broken spirits and a faded heart. To try and cheat the weariness of others I must strain head and nerves, and stifle true feeling to portray its mockery.
“I suppose I only re-echo what thousands have said, that I wish from my heart the race was run, and that I could lie down beside my poor Charley.”
