is homesickness. To a doctor who offered him a new remedy, he
cried:

"Go! go! no doctor's tinkering can help me now. The machine is
shattered. But, ah, would but God in His mercy grant that it might hold
together till I could embrace my Lina and my boys once more!" His
effort to keep Caroline from knowing his illness was kept up. When she
wrote him that the children were begging to know why he remained so long
away, he answered:

"Yes, the father is long, long away; ah, and how long is the time to
him! how every day is counted! Patience! patience! Day crawls after
day."

"God bless you, my deeply beloved ones!" he wrote once more. "I count
days, hours, minutes, until we meet again. We have often been parted
before, and loved each other dearly, God knows. But this terrible
yearning I have never known before."

At last he grew so desperately sad that he broke his rule and wrote his
wife full details of his suffering; he had given up hope of ever seeing
his home again.

At this time, a singer wished to bring out a new song of his, and
furnished him with words. His once alert fancy groped long for a melody,
but, as his son writes:

"At last on the morning of the 18th of May, the great artist's flitting
genius came back to him, and for the last time gave him a farewell kiss
upon that noble forehead now bedewed with the cold sweat of death--for
the last time! But the trembling hands were unable to write down more
than the notes for the voice."

Fate had still reserved a bitter blow for him. He had fastened his hopes
upon a farewell concert, and grew morbid upon the importance of it to
his future.

"This day week is my concert," he wrote on the 19th of May. "How my poor
heart beats when I think of it! What will be the result? The last
chances left me are this concert and my benefit. When I think on all
they cost me, should they not turn out so as to meet my modest
expectations, it were hard indeed. But I must not let my courage fail
me. I will rely on Him, who has already been so infinitely merciful to
us. You will think, my beloved life, that I lay far too much stress on
this. But remember that my hope of fortune for us was the only purpose
of this weary journey. Can you not comprehend, then, why I now hold for
so important that which has always played but a subordinate part in my
life? Pray, dearest heart, pray that poor old papa's wishes, which are
all for your dear sakes, may yet be fulfilled."

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