Among the many who called on us for the latter reason, was a large dry goods merchant called Willis, and he gave me a letter of introduction to a gentleman in New York, who he thought might be able to help me to find suitable employment. I speak of this letter, because it influenced my life for nearly two years. As we could not get away on the twelfth, I took Alice and went once more to those four graves I should never see again. We covered them with flowers and sweet shrubs, and the child wept passionately. I had no tears left. I was almost stupefied with grief and anxiety. Four tines in seventeen years, I had broken up my home, and gone to a place I knew not of, to make another; but this removal was the hardest of all. Yet I am ungrateful to say so. From friends known and unknown I received help and comfort. Difficulties vanished as soon as I met them. Whatever was necessary came to me. My way was cleared before me in the most remarkable manner. Even Mr. Lidstone, the auctioneer, refused to take any payment for selling the furniture, and I was so pleased and grateful at this mark of kindness from a stranger, that I have kept his name 299 green in my memory ever since. It is true that at this time the hearts of all were open to those who had suffered in the great calamity, but more than a year had passed since Robert died, and he was yet unforgotten, for much of the sympathy and attention we received was for his sake.
CHAPTER XVIII
I GO TO NEW YORK
“We have not wings, we cannot soar,
But we have feet to scale and climb;
By slow degrees, by more and more,
The cloudy Summits of our time.”
. . . . . . . . . .
“The intellectual aroma of the building, its subtle Library essence, and redolence of Morocco leather, printer’s ink and paper, all blended and mellowed with the learned dust of Time.”—Astor Library.
On the thirteenth of November, 1868, we went on board the Ariadne. The ship lay at the bar, but there were hopes that a change of wind would give us water sufficient to get over it; but the wind did not change for four days, and it was on the seventeenth, just at sunset that we took our last look at Galveston. Just at the same hour, twelve years before, Robert and I stood together taking a last look at Galveston, before going up the Buffalo Bayou. I gazed on the white houses in their lonely setting of bare shrubs and sea water, until they were only a gray blur on the surrounding gray. I do not speak of what was going on in the heart, it cannot be told, neither can it ever be forgotten.