She died in Morristown, at the residence of her devoted niece and namesake, Mrs. James Farley Cox, and soothed by her loving ministrations,—after a protracted illness, lasting over a year. Mrs. Cox tells us, "she loved Morristown and said amidst great pain, that her last year, was, despite all, the happiest of her life".
"Lofty and Lowly"; "Charms and Counter-Charms", and "To Seem and To Be", are all alike noble books. Miss McIntosh seems a woman of strong creative powers, with a delicacy of feeling and a fine touch of womanliness, united to a certain delicate perception of character. She did not write from what we now so grandly call types, or, for the sake of displaying a surgical dissection of character; but her books are groupings of individuals as real as those we meet in daily life. There are no strained situations, no fanciful make-ups, and no unnatural poses.
There are the lovely Alice Montrose with a strangely beautiful blending of delicate refinement and womanly strength, rising to meet every requirement of her varied life; Mr. Gaston, the New England merchant; Richard Grahame the hero of "Lofty and Lowly", with some telling contrasts in the way of villians and weaker characters. Beside this, Miss McIntosh has a strong sympathy for nature and all through her stories she stops, as it were to show us the flowering fields and summer skies and as she draws us to her, we feel the beatings of her own warm human heart going out as it does to the young and inexperienced.
Again, Miss McIntosh gives in her stories faithful representations of life both north and south, before the war, forty years ago. These pictures are of peculiar value as few books preserve pictorial records of that condition of life now passed away forever. She had a power in massing details and binding them by a thread of common interest and common action. She seemed in her writings, like one who had been spiritually "lifted higher" and like all such spirits she could not but draw others after her. Her books in past years have had wide and lasting influence and it is a pity they could not now be substituted for much of the miserable literature which only pleases a passing hour or teaches false views of life.
Mrs. Maria McIntosh Cox.
Mrs. Cox, long a resident of Morristown, was named for the dear aunt to whom the preceding sketch relates, and, as is often the case with namesakes for some unexplained reason, the mantle of Miss McIntosh's genius fell upon her.
From girlhood, Mrs. Cox has written for various papers and magazines. Some years ago, the Appletons published a little volume of hers for very young children, called "A year with Maggie and Emma", which was afterwards translated into French.
"Raymond Kershaw", published in 1888, is a volume of larger size. To this we shall refer later. In March, 1890, The Youth's Companion published a short story founded on an adventure of the author's father with Lafitte, the famous pirate. It was entitled "A Brave Middy", and won a prize of $500, in a contest of similar tales.
In the current numbers of Wide Awake from December to June 1891-'92 appeared a story of ten chapters called "Jack Brereton's Three Months' Service", which, in August, 1892, was brought out in book form by D. Lothrop & Co., Boston. The idea most prominent in this story, the "motif", is the reflex action of a soldier's enlistment on his deserted family. "I chanced", says the author, "to thoroughly see and know what sudden three months' calls entailed on the volunteer and those who fought the battle out at home, and I enjoyed telling what is, in spirit and in most details, a true story, though not as connected with such people as the story describes".
"Brave Ben Broughton", written by request for the McClure Syndicate, and a Folk Lore story are the latest from the pen of Mrs. Cox.