“Father died in 1867, at the age of eighty-seven.

“As for mother, she had the happiness before her death of seeing her fondly loved relatives once more.  In the autumn of 1843, mother and I went to New Hampshire to visit the old home and friends.  Father was urged to accompany us, but he chose to cling to his Western home.  For the third time I now travelled in a canal-boat, but this time it was a packet, and not one of the slow ‘line-boats’ that I described to you in speaking of our journey from Vermont to Pennsylvania.

“Brother Horace accompanied us from New York to New Hampshire, where we spent several weeks visiting mother’s old friends and relatives.  The meeting between mother and her sister, Aunt Margaret Dickey, was especially tender, for they had been separated many years, and did not expect to meet again.

“Aunt Margaret is still living, although now in her ninetieth year.  I remember hearing that she read your uncle’s ‘Recollections,’ as they appeared in the Ledger, with the liveliest interest.  She was at that time eighty-four years old.

“In her youth Aunt Margaret was a decided beauty, with luxuriant hair of the real golden shade, neither flaxen, ash-color, nor red.  She was naturally refined and amiable.

“From New Hampshire we went to Fitchburg, Massachusetts, where mother’s half-sister, Sally, resided.  Aunt Sally was doubly my aunt, having married father’s brother, Dustin Greeley.  She was a slender, handsome woman, with blue eyes and light hair, and possessed mother’s happy temperament, which all the trials of her hard life had not been able to change.

“That year I celebrated three Thanksgivings within as many weeks.”

“Pray how did that happen, auntie?” inquired Gabrielle, who had just entered the room.

“Thanksgiving Day was not then restricted to the last Thursday in the month,” was the reply, “but was appointed by the Governor of each State at any time that he saw fit between harvest and the holidays; therefore, being in three different States within a month, I had three Thanksgiving dinners.

“When we returned to New York, we stopped for a short visit at Turtle Bay.  Pickie was then eight months old, and as sweet and poetic-looking as one of Correggio’s cherubs.  Your mamma was then in the first flush of her maternal enthusiasm.  She and your papa were desirous that mother should remain in New York and spend the winter with them; but fondly as she loved your papa, and dear as her daughter-in-law and her little grandson were to her, she felt that her duty and her strongest love recalled her to her husband and her home in the woods.  She returned to Pennsylvania, and took up again her life of daily care, but she brought back little joy with her, although no word of discontent escaped her.  Her favorite seat was by the window looking east, and there we often surprised her gazing with an intent look down the road.  When we would ask her if she was expecting any one, or for whom she was looking, she would say with a startled expression, ‘Oh, no one;’ but we always fancied that she was thinking of her early home that she had now left forever.