But one day, when the
beautiful estate he was always so proud of was getting ready to
smile under the suns of spring, he left her just when she needed
him most, for their boys had plunged forward into the world of
business in the large cities, and she wanted a strong arm to lean
on. It was the only time he failed to respond to her devoted
nursing, but now she could not bring him back from the river's
brink, as she had so often done before. Cold had settled in all the
broken places of his poor body, and he slipped away from her, a
sacrifice to his fight against evil on the altar of his nation's
good. In his feverish wanderings he returned to the tongue of his
childhood, the beautiful, dulcet Mohawk. Then recollecting and
commanding himself, he would weakly apologize to Lydia with: "I
forgot; I thought it was my mother," and almost his last words were,
"It must be by my mother's side," meaning his resting-place. So his
valiant spirit went fearlessly forth.
* * * * *
"Do you ever think, dear," said Lydia to her youngest child, some
years later, "that you are writing the poetry that always lived in
an unexpressed state here in my breast?"
"No, Marmee," answered the girl, who was beginning to mount the
ladder of literature, "I never knew you wanted to _write_ poetry,
although I knew you loved it.
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