he did not heed her, and probably did not even realize who it was that caught him repeatedly in her arms and tenderly insisted that he should restrain himself.  At last she desisted in despair; and, with the bitter tears streaming down her 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 to death, by the relentless cholera; and my letter, announcing that calamity, drew from her a burst of passionate sorrow, such as hardly any bereavement but the loss of a very near relative could have impelled.  Another year had just ended, when a calamity, equally sudden, bereft a wide circle of her likewise, with her husband and infant son.  Little did I fear, when I bade her a confident Good-by, on the deck of her outward-bound ship, that the sea would close over her earthly remains, ere we should meet again; far less that the light of my eyes and the cynosure of my hopes, who then bade her a tenderer and sadder farewell, would precede her on the dim pathway to that ‘Father’s house,’ whence is no returning!  Ah, well!  God is above all, and gracious alike in what he conceals and what he discloses;—­benignant and bounteous, as well when he reclaims as when he bestows.  In a few years, at farthest, our loved and lost ones will welcome us to their home.”

Favorably as Mr. Greeley speaks of Margaret’s articles in the Tribune, it is yet true that she never brought her full power to bear upon them; partly because she was too much exhausted by previous over-work, partly because it hindered her free action to aim at popular effect.  Her own estimate of them is thus expressed:—­