My own, my beautiful Champlain?”
But Margaret was happy; the family were reunited, and she had health sufficient to allow her to pursue her studies, still under her mother’s direction. She was fond, too, of devising little plans for intellectual improvement and amusement: among others, a weekly newspaper was issued in manuscript, called the “Juvenile Aspirant.” But this happiness was soon clouded. Her own severe illness excited alarming fears; and hardly was she convalescent, when, in the spring of 1834, intelligence was received from 36 Canada of the death of her eldest sister. This was a severe shock, for she had always looked up to this only surviving sister as to one who would supply the place of her seemingly dying mother. But she forgot her own grief in trying to solace that of her mother. Her feelings, as usual, were expressed in verses, which are as remarkable for their strain of sober piety as for poetical merit. The following are portions of an address—
“TO MY MOTHER, OPPRESSED WITH SORROW.
“Weep, O my mother! I will bid thee weep,
For grief like thine requires the aid of tears;
But O, I would not see thy bosom thus
Bowed down to earth, with anguish so severe;
I would not see thine ardent feelings crushed,
Deadened to all save sorrow’s thrilling tone,
Like the pale flower, which hangs its drooping head