[Manchester—Wednesday, 25 July 1866]
Wednesday. We went to Boston together. It was old Sally’s funeral. She was buried from the Home in Charles St. at 10 o’clock so I had only time enough to prepare the flowers. Her poor little face so crumpled up by wrinkles like a piece of wet and crinkled parchment during her life was smoothed into a gentle majesty of expression by Death. I was ashamed of my lack of self-control but woman-like, the memory of her gentle sweetness and patient suffering came back upon me with the thought that my mother too must soon go that way and I could not keep from tears—not that I missed her so much or was sorry to have her go nor do I feel a real agony at the thought of death, but the sudden abasement of our little career before the awful presence, the memory of vanished affection, and sympathy with those who do really suffer, all these conspire to melt our tears from us where the fiery pain is not too great for these.
I observed a fly walk across the face of the dead as a swallow would alight on the brow of a statue in the market-place and I understood without nearer approach how cold and utterly dead a thing a human body may be.
Went home, read and wrote for three hours & arranged all things for our departure; then I walked down town. How utterly the scene changed. I found Miss Whitney in her studio at work upon a bust, eager to embody her idea, her eyes shining with endeavor, I found the table at the Athenæum surrounded with students, to whom death was not, I found the gay and the busy, flirting and trafficking, and saw a picture by Curtis of an iceberg, an embodied dream. Then there were Vedder’s pictures too, rushing wind and turbulent sea, and a grand loving scene by Hunt, The Fortune Teller.
I found my darling too who bought me a lovely sketch by Gay denying himself an exquisite thing by Fuller because he had twice that day already given away nearly the same amount as he paid for the Gay.
