The journey homeward, though made in the heats of July, was attended with less suffering than was anticipated. “Her joy,” says her mother, “upon finding herself at home, operated for a time like magic.” The progress of disease seemed to be suspended. Those around her received new hope; but she herself was not deceived, and she calmly waited for that great change which for her possessed no terrors, for her hopes as to the future rested upon a sure foundation.
But one fear disturbed her, to which she refers in the following, the last piece she ever composed, and which is left unfinished:—
“There is a something which I dread;
It is a dark and fearful thing;
It steals along with withering tread,
Or sweeps on wild destruction’s wing.
That thought comes o’er me in the hour
Of grief, of sickness, or of sadness;
’Tis not the dread of death; ’tis more,—