Eleven years after "Laura Capello" was written its author visited the scenes where the plot was laid. She enjoyed deeply this foreign travel, and has left a partial record of it in her letters published in Boston and Southern papers, and in her private correspondence. She writes thus to a friend from Rome: "I am living every hour, never have I known days of such enchantment; Roman violets that make the air sweet, Roman fleas that bite with a Swinburne ardor, Roman donkeys that bray in the early morning, Roman shops that bewilder with their gems, shopmen who will make you buy whether you will or no; even in these delights I revel, so what can I say of the pictures, the statues, the ruins of Rome? Do you remember how my Lilian exhausted her raptures after the first layer of her box, and sat afterwards in a mute adoring ecstasy? Think of Lilian's mother in the same position."
Several days were spent by her party at a little coast town in France. At times the hours lagged, so the little group, like the young people in the Decameron, devised game and story to amuse themselves. Sherwood Bonner showed herself the most fruitful of device, and became the leader in the sport. She devised a game that was played with avidity. The loser each time was supposed to pay the forfeit by taking his life with his own hands. A wan young Scotsman who had been "Ordered South" chanced to be one of the party and participated in the game. For the rest it was a pleasing pastime, but for him it had a tragic suggestion, for at that time Robert Louis Stevenson—it was no less than he—had begun that hand to hand conflict with disease that terminated fatally twenty years later. It is thought that he received from this game the suggestion of that very unusual story of his, "The Suicide Club."
Home at last came this busy working bee after her flitting in distant lands. "The Crest of the White Hat," "Rosine's Story," and other sketches show the effect of this foreign travel. The years following were filled with hard work; ever attaining, but never quite satisfied, she strove to make each piece better than the last. During this period she wrote a clever characterization in verse of "The Radical Club," which set all Boston to laughing.
Sometimes she had her hours of despondency as when she wrote a friend, "Put up a tablet for me in case I join the mermaids and write on it,
Death came to set me free,
I met him cheerily
As my true friend."
During the summer of '78 yellow fever raged in many parts of the South. The citizens of Holly Springs with a noble disregard for consequences offered an asylum to the refugees from the stricken town of Grenada; in this way the plague was introduced, and of the first hundred who took the fever only ten survived.
Sherwood Bonner was in the North at the time, but she at once hurried to Holly Springs to urge her loved ones to seek a place of safety. But the old physician would not go and his son remained with him; they were soon stricken with fever; she nursed by their bedside during the weary hours of their sickness and they died in her arms on the same day. She escaped the disease, but left Holly Springs broken in health from her constant vigils, and wounded in spirit. She wrote an account of the plague for The Youth's Companion, from which the following extract is taken: "It is not alone to see loved ones die; it is to dread their dying kiss. It is not to watch the dear dead face until the coffin lid is closed above it, but to turn, shuddering, from the face where you can see waves of change follow each other, until it has become a yellow transfigured mask. It is not to see the folded hand clasping flowers, the dear forms enshrouded in fresh grave-clothes, nor to see them laid away with prayers uttered above them and friends standing by with uncovered heads, but it is to know—with what intensity of horror!—that these forms are changed to a poison so deadly, that death can be tasted in the air around them, and love itself shrinks from rendering its last sad offices. It is to know that they are buried, wrapped hastily in sheets, sometimes uncoffined, hurried to deep graves, without friends, or mourners, or care, by hirelings, who slight and dread their task."
After the publication of "Like unto Like" she found ready publishers. Mr. Conant, the editor of Harper's Weekly, said to her, "I accept your articles now without reading them in advance, your signature is enough." Enduring fame was hers if she could only live to grasp it, but ere the noon hour was reached, the worker was laid low. She began to feel the approach of an insidious disease, which she strove in vain to throw off. Not wishing to distress her loved ones she spoke of it to only a few friends, who finally persuaded her to consult the best medical authority. The physician when he saw her perfect physique expressed his surprise at her coming. He made the examination, but hesitated to state the result. She would have the whole truth and he pronounced her death sentence, telling her that she had but a single year of life. She met her fate with fortitude, and determined to make the most of the few remaining months, in order to provide a competency for the loved ones that she must soon leave.
She worked on to the very gates of death, her courage never forsaking her; and even when her good right hand was useless she continued to dictate to an amanuensis, and was satisfied with nothing short of the best work.
February 14, 1883, she wrote: