From that time Philadelphia became intolerable to me. I closed my house and accompanied my kind and gentle friend to the home in New Jersey which was always open to the afflicted. Here I remained until Charles removed to St. Lawrence County, N. Y. —”then a dense wilderness—with his family. He had received a grant of lands from the government, which he exchanged for an extensive territory in that vicinity.
To that wilderness I came with my dear Anna to share the hardships and privations inseparable from the attempt to found a home
in such a region. With these trials, wholly new to us, we have also received and enjoyed many blessings. She is surrounded by a blooming group of sons and daughters, and blessed with smiling, prattling grandchildren. We have seen a fine village grow up around us, and our country has been crowned with unexampled prosperity.
The one sole cloud over Anna’s happiness has been the stern refusal of my obstinate step-father, who still lives at a very advanced age, to forgive the daughter he so cruelly banished from his heart and home. I have often thought that, if the colonies had been subdued, he would have welcomed her back long ago. She has written many letters to him, but they are always returned unopened. My own dear mother died the year following Anna’s marriage. I saw her but once after her removal to Nova Scotia. The separation from her was one of the greatest trials of my life. Few indeed who have lived so long have suffered less from severe afflictions than I, and my heart swells with gratitude daily when I recall the varied blessings which the beneficent hand of Providence has poured upon my lengthened pilgrimage.
* * * * *
Some years later, when Mrs. von Francke was past ninety, I was on a visit to the dear friends of whom I have discoursed in this rambling sketch, when they received a message from Nova Scotia that the aged Mr. Foote was dying, and could not leave the world in peace until he had seen and been reconciled with his long-banished daughter. He requested that Charles should go with her.
There was bustling and packing in great haste. In a few hours after the message arrived they were
on board a steamer, bound for Quebec, en route for Nova Scotia. Mr. Foote lived some weeks after their arrival, and would not allow them to leave him for an hour. They remained until after the funeral.
Mrs. von Francke survived her step-father but a few months. All the elder members of the family have long since passed away.
It is many years since I have seen the lovely home of my childhood, or that other one, on the bank of the dear old St. Lawrence, where I passed so large a portion of childhood’s happy hours; but the memories connected with both, and with the dear friends who made those hours so happy, will never pass away.