One of the sailors suggested that if each passenger sit on a plank, holding on by ropes, they would attempt to push him or her to land.  Mrs. Hasty was the first to venture, and after being twice washed off, half-drowned, reached the shore.  Then Margaret was urged, but she hesitated, unless all three could be saved.  Every moment the danger increased.  The crew were finally ordered “to save themselves,” but four remained with the passengers.  It was useless to look longer to the people on shore for help, though it was now past three o’clock,—­twelve hours since the vessel struck.

Margaret had finally been induced to try the plank.  The steward had taken Angelino in his arms, promising to save him or die with him, when a strong sea swept the forecastle, and all went down together.  Ossoli caught the rigging for a moment, but Margaret sank at once.  When last seen, she was seated at the foot of the foremast, still clad in her white nightdress, with her hair fallen loose upon her shoulders.  Angelino and the steward were washed upon the beach twenty minutes later, both dead, though warm.  Margaret’s prayer was answered,—­that they “might go together, and that the anguish might be brief.”

The pretty boy of two years was dressed in a child’s frock taken from his mother’s trunk, which had come to shore, laid in a seaman’s chest, and buried in the sand, while the sailors, who loved him, stood around, weeping.  His body was finally removed to Mt.  Auburn, and buried in the family lot.  The bodies of Ossoli and Margaret were never recovered.  The only papers of value which came to shore were their love letters, now deeply prized.  The book ready for publication was never found.

When those on shore were asked why they did not launch the life-boat, they replied, “Oh! if we had known there were any such persons of importance on board, we should have tried to do our best!”

Thus, at forty, died one of the most gifted women in America, when her work seemed just begun.  To us, who see how the world needed her, her death is a mystery; to Him who “worketh all things after the counsel of His own will” there is no mystery.  She filled her life with charities and her mind with knowledge, and such are ready for the progress of Eternity.

MARIA MITCHELL.

[Illustration:  MARIA MITCHELL.]

In the quiet, picturesque island of Nantucket, in a simple home, lived William and Lydia Mitchell with their family of ten children.  William had been a school-teacher, beginning when he was eighteen years of age, and receiving two dollars a week in winter, while in summer he kept soul and body together by working on a small farm, and fishing.

In this impecunious condition he had fallen in love with and married Lydia Coleman, a true-hearted Quaker girl, a descendant of Benjamin Franklin, one singularly fitted to help him make his way in life.  She was quick, intelligent, and attractive in her usual dress of white, and was the clerk of the Friends’ meeting where he attended.  She was enthusiastic in reading, becoming librarian successively of two circulating libraries, till she had read every book upon the shelves, and then in the evenings repeating what she had read to her associates, her young lover among them.