Page:Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (IA memoirsofmargare02fullrich).pdf/170

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162
NEW YORK.

face, observed: — ‘Pickie, many friends have treated me unkindly, but no one had ever the power to cut me to the heart, as you have!’ Being thus let alone, he soon came to himself, and their mutual delight in the meeting was rather heightened by the momentary estrangement.

“They had one more meeting; their last on earth! ‘Aunty Margaret’ was to embark for Europe on a certain day, and ‘Pickie’ was brought into the city to bid her farewell. They met this time also at my office, and together we thence repaired to the ferry-boat, on which she was returning to her residence in Brooklyn to complete her preparations for the voyage. There they took a tender and affecting leave of each other. But soon his mother called at the office, on her way to the departing ship, and we were easily persuaded to accompany her thither, and say farewell once more, to the manifest satisfaction of both Margaret and the youngest of her devoted friends. Thus they parted, never to meet again in time. She sent him messages and presents repeatedly from Europe; and he, when somewhat older, dictated a letter in return, which was joyfully received and acknowledged. When the mother of our great-souled friend spent some days with us nearly two years afterward, ‘Pickie’ talked to her often and lovingly of ‘Aunty Margaret,’ proposing that they two should ‘take a boat and go over and see her,’ — for, to his infantile conception, the low coast of Long Island, visible just across the East River, was that Europe to which she had sailed, and where she was unaccountably detained so long. Alas! a far longer and more adventurous journey was required to reunite those loving souls! The 12th of July, 1849, saw him stricken down, from health