"Miss Muff Maidie Marjory Fleming,
favored by Rare Rear-Admiral Fleming,"
she says: "I long much to see you, and talk over all our old stories
together, and to hear you read and repeat. I am pining for my old
friend Cesario, and poor Lear, and wicked Richard. How is the dear
Multiplication table going on? Are you still as much attached to 9
times 9 as you used to be?"
But this dainty, bright thing is about to flee,--to come "quick to
confusion." The measles she writes of seized her, and she died on the
19th of December, 1811. The day before her death, Sunday, she sat up in
bed, worn and thin, her eye gleaming as with the light of a coming
world, and with a tremulous, old voice repeated the following lines by
Burns,--heavy with the shadow of death, and lit with the fantasy of the
judgment-seat,--the publican's prayer in paraphrase:--
"Why am I loth to leave this earthly scene?
Have I so found it full of pleasing charms?--
Some drops of joy, with draughts of ill between,
Some gleams of sunshine 'mid renewing storms?
Is it departing pangs my soul alarms?
Or Death's unlovely, dreary, dark abode?
For guilt, for GUILT, my terrors are in arms;
I tremble to approach an angry God,
And justly smart beneath his sin-avenging rod.
"Fain would I say, Forgive my foul offence,
Fain promise never more to disobey;
But should my Author health again dispense,
Again I might forsake fair virtue's way,
Again in folly's path might go astray,
Again exalt the brute and sink the man.
Then how should I for heavenly mercy pray,
Who act so counter heavenly mercy's plan,
Who sin so oft have mourned, yet to temptation ran?
"O thou great Governor of all below,
If I might dare a lifted eye to thee,
Thy nod can make the tempest cease to blow,
And still the tumult of the raging sea;
With that controlling power assist even me
Those headstrong furious passions to confine,
For all unfit I feel my powers to be
To rule their torrent in the allowed line;
O, aid me with thy help, OMNIPOTENCE DIVINE."
It is more affecting than we care to say to read her mother's and
Isabella Keith's letters written immediately after her death. Old and
withered, tattered and pale, they are now: but when you read them, how
quick, how throbbing with life and love! how rich in that language of
affection which only women and Shakespeare and Luther can use,--that
power of detaining the soul over the beloved object and its loss!
"K. PHILIP (_to_ CONSTANCE).
You are as fond of grief as of your child.