While I watched and hoped in silence,
For the dawn of a richer splendor;
Musing what new gifts await me—
What of Knowledge, or Love, or Light!”
In July Professor Libbey and Mrs. Libbey spent two days at Cherry Croft, and at the end of the month I had a visit from the Countess de Brémont. She brought a letter from 449 Mr. Paul of London, and I found her an interesting woman. She had just come from Africa, where she had lived for several months in Paul Kruger’s home. Her descriptions of it, and of the Boer President and his family, were of the most unsavory even disgusting character; but I listened to them with a kind of satisfaction. I had no respect for the Boers, and I was heart-sick at their early successes; so much so, that my doctor had forbidden me to read anything respecting the war until my daughter gave me permission.
In August I managed to locate the story of “The Maid of Maiden Lane.” I had begun it half-a-dozen times, but always found myself running across “The Bow of Orange Ribbon;” and I was about to give it up, when I awoke one morning about four o’clock, with the whole story clear in my mind. I made a note of the plot as given me, and then with a good heart finished off “Trinity Bells” for Mrs. Dodge.
On the third of September I was at work again on “The Maid of Maiden Lane,” and on the eighth I took tea at Dr. Henry Van Dyke’s, who was then occupying the beautiful Club House on Storm King as a summer home. The fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth of September, I kept as I have always done in memory of my dear husband’s and sons’ deaths, and I wrote, “It is thirty-two years ago, but I have forgotten nothing of God’s mercy, and of their love.
‘Faithful, indeed, the spirit that remembers,
After such years of change and suffering.’
I am more alone than ever, but God is sufficient.”