Page:Extracts from the letters and journals of George Fletcher Moore.djvu/36

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10
REMINISCENCES OF HOME

comparative strangers. I constantly wear a ring which —— gave me just before I came away: Poor fellow! he could scarcely speak, I could not articulate a syllable. I trust before this, his anxious and affectionate heart has found rest and peace in wedded life! I dress every day before a glass belonging to a case given me by Miss T——.

Instances of Mrs. R.'s kindness are constantly before me. Poor John Maguire (Joseph's old servant), with tears in his eyes, entreated my acceptance of a handsome dark lantern, which he had had for one and twenty years. It is now suspended in my cabin, and my reminiscences revert with as much gratification to this keepsake of poor John's, as to any other that I see around me. Furlong's kindness and attention appear in several marks of his friendship. A cabin lamp, fowling-piece, and pair of pistols, an apparatus for kindling an instantaneous light, are suspended in my cabin; and when I look at these articles, as well as at the books, and many other of his gifts, I am filled with gratitude at his disinterested friendship; but I shall not dwell more upon recollections. I cannot dare to indulge in the "solemn sorrows of suffocating sensibility" as Bridgetina Botherum says, else I should unnerve my mind when it has need of all its fortitude; and yet, my dear brother, I cannot avoid giving you the rythmical produce of my waking thoughts last night,