CHAPTER XVI
THE LAST OF GREEN PEACE
1872-1876; aet. 53-57
He who launched thee a bolt of fire
Strong in courage and in desire
Takes thee again a weapon true
In heaven's armory ever new.
Still shall the masterful fight go on,
Still shall the battle of Right be won
And He who fixed thee in upper air
Shall carry thy prowess otherwhere.
J. W. H.
As our father's health failed more and more, his heart turned to the home he had made. He longed for Green Peace; and—the lease falling in about this time—in the spring of 1872 he and our mother and Maud moved thither, and took up their quarters in the "new part," while Laura and her husband came to occupy the old. Here the first grandchild (Alice Maud Richards) was born; here and at Oak Glen the next four years were mainly passed.
The Doctor's ardent spirit longed for new fields of work, new causes to help; the earthly part could not follow. How he struggled, toiling, suffering, fighting the good fight to his last breath, has been told elsewhere:[74] suffice it to say that these years were grave ones for the household, spite of new joys that dawned for all.
The grandchildren opened a new world for both our parents: a world which one was to enjoy for a space all too brief, the other through long years, in which she was to be to the youngest generation a lamp of wisdom, a flame of warmth and tenderness, a fountain of joy.
Among the memory pictures of this time is one of her sitting at her desk, laboring at her endless correspondence; beside her, on the floor, the baby of the period, equally absorbed in the contents of the waste-paper basket.