the circle. Several of them
mourned for Nino, as if he had been their own; and even the
callous wreckers were softened, for the moment, by a sight
so full of pathetic beauty. The next day, borne upon their
shoulders in a chest, which one of the sailors gave for a
coffin, it was buried in a hollow among the sand heaps. As I
stood beside the lonely little mound, it seemed that never
was seen a more affecting type of orphanage. Around, wiry
and stiff, were scanty spires of beach-grass; near by,
dwarf-cedars, blown flat by wintry winds, stood like grim
guardians; only at the grave-head a stunted wild-rose, wilted
and scraggy, was struggling for existence. Thoughts came
of the desolate childhood of many a little one in this hard
world; and there was joy in the assurance, that Angelo was
neither motherless nor fatherless, and that Margaret and
her husband were not childless in that New World, which so
suddenly they had entered together.

"To-morrow, Margaret's mother, sister, and brothers will
remove Nino's body to New England."

* * * * *

Was this, then, thy welcome home? A howling hurricane, the pitiless
sea, wreck on a sand-bar, an idle life-boat, beach-pirates, and not
one friend! In those twelve hours of agony, did the last scene appear
but as the fitting close for a life of storms, where no safe haven
was ever in reach; where thy richest treasures were so often stranded;
where even the dearest and nearest seemed always too far off, or just
too late, to help.

Ah, no! not so. The clouds were gloomy on the waters, truly; but their
tops were golden in the sun. It was in the Father's House that welcome
awaited thee.

"Glory to God! to God! he saith,
Knowledge by suffering entereth,
And Life is perfected by Death."

[Footnote A: The following account is as accurate, even in minute
details, as conversation with several of the survivors enabled me to
make it.--W.H.C.]

[Footnote B: Mrs. Hasty's own words while describing the incident.]

[Footnote C: The letters from which extracts were quoted in the
previous chapter.]

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli,
Vol. II, by Margaret Fuller Ossoli

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARGARED FULLER, VOL. 2 ***

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