The daisies have gone with the sweet double violets and roses, and the fragrant heliotrope and mignonette, of which we used to make bouquets to dress the table and adorn the rooms; whilst brilliant, scentless flowers now fill our garden beds, and the maples with their aureolas of flame color and molten cold tell the same sad story—summer has fled.
For the last time I have walked up to the pine grove, and have taken leave of that spot where dear uncle's feet have so often trodden, and said farewell, too, to the forest trees whose trunks still bear the impress of the axe once wielded by that hand now forever at rest; I have drunk once more from the spring that Aunt Mary so dearly loved, and which is far sweeter to me than the vaunted waters of Trevi, and entered for the last time her loved home in the woods over whose threshold her weary feet will never pass again.
"Tempo passato, perche non ritorni a me?"
Adieu to Chappaqua and to my journal. My daintily bound volume, so large that I feared not easily to fill its pages, is closely covered, and only a few blank lines remain whereon to take leave of it forever. Adieus are always saddening, and I close it with the words unspoken.
And for dear, dear Chappaqua, I can find no words more fitting to express my love than those verses written, it is true, in honor of another Westchester Home, but so appropriate that I will insert them here, trusting their author, Mr. JOHN SAVAGE, will pardon me for so doing.
OUR DEAR WESTCHESTER HOME.
Where'er my hopeful fancy dares,
Or toiling footstep falls--
Through ancient cities' thoroughfares
Or Fortune's festal halls;
O'er mountains grand, through forests deep,
Or crest the yielding foam,
I find no spot
Like that dear cot,
My own Westchester Home!
Bedecked with every sylvan charm,
By loving Nature blest,
Embraced between the ocean's arm
And Hudson's bounteous breast,
Westchester, in her beauty smiles
To Heaven's protecting dome,
For all the good.
By field or flood
That crowns our happy home!
THE END