Mrs. Barr
November, 1880
But when the home is broken up the family scatters. I felt this painfully, for I missed Lilly constantly, and Mary was a great deal with friends, or away, so that Alice and I were really 365 much alone. I had most of the office work to do, and was obliged to leave her when about it, though I took her with me to the library, if the weather was favorable.
Under these conditions it was as easy for me to go to England as to remain in New York during the summer, and in May, 1882, having just finished and sold to Appleton, my book on the “Children of Shakespeare’s Dramas,” I took Alice and went first to Glasgow and afterwards to Yorkshire; remaining away until Christmas was approaching. During that summer vacation, so-called, I sent back to New York eighty-one poems, stories, and descriptive articles, and this number does not include poems and stories written for English papers and magazines during the same period, but of which I have kept no list. These eighty-one poems and stories were sent to Mary, who managed their sale so well, that all were placed and mostly paid for, when I returned home.
This voyage is memorable to me because of a great salvation. On May the third, 1882, I dreamed that a Presence whose enmity I felt, stood by my bedside and said, “You are going to be lost! You are going to be lost! You are going to be ship-wrecked!” And I answered, even as I slept, “I do not believe you. God is able and willing to keep me in all my ways, and my soul trusteth in Him forever.” Then I awoke, and I said consciously over and over, the words I had said in my dream, and so fell asleep again, fighting the fear in my heart with trust and faith. And again I dreamed a Presence stood by my side, a holy loving Presence, and it said confidently “Go, and the Lord be with thee” (1st Samuel, 17:37). And I opened my eyes full of happiness, and there was no shadow of fear in my heart, and three days afterwards Alice and I sailed in the Devonia for Glasgow. We were, as before said, in Scotland and Yorkshire all summer; but took passage for New York again on the eleventh of November. I held fast to the promise given me, and in pleading it for our return voyage, I was suddenly affected in a remarkable way, by the wording of the promise. For the first time I noticed the word “be” in it. It seemed to stand out more plainly than any other word. Then I understood. God had promised not only to go with me, but to be 366 with me. That was sufficient. There were very few saloon passengers. I remember only two ladies beside Alice and myself, an actress, and a Mrs. Orr of Cornwall-on-Hudson. No one comes into your life for nothing, and the next year being advised to go to the mountains for a month or two, I remembered what this lady had said about Cornwall, and I wrote and asked her if she knew of a house I could rent. She advised me to come and see Cornwall. I did so, took a house for six months, and have been here twenty-eight years.
Our first three days at sea were fine, and the wind favorable; the next day the sea was rough, and I was thrown against the brass pipe of the saloon stove, and my right hand painfully burned. On the eighteenth of November, at eleven o’clock at night, we broke our machinery, and in the morning, when I went on deck, I was appalled by the sight of the deck covered with pieces of iron, and wreckage of every kind; and my heart for a moment failed me. For nine days we drifted helplessly about the Atlantic, but all the time, day and night, men were working steadily to repair our engine. Captain Young, a devout man and a fine sailor, was speechlessly anxious, but he clung to Alice whenever he saw her, for she had told him the ship would reach New York safely; and he believed her.
On the night of the twenty-seventh, after dinner, he asked Alice and me to pray for the ship. “At eight bells,” he said, “listen and pray! We are then going to try the engine. If she works, we may, if God wills, reach our harbor in safety——”
“And if not, Captain?”
“We shall still be in God’s hands.”
With these words he turned away, and Alice and I watched faithfully with the anxious man. At eight bells we were on our knees, and as the bells began to strike, the thud of the engine began with them.
“I told you all would be right,” said Alice, and I kissed her, and both our cheeks were wet.