"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