Memoirs of Anne C.L. Botta,: written by her friends. With selections from her correspondence and from her writings in prose and poetry.

Enne C. Z.:otta
But at length the "grief-deafened ear" begins to
perceive the loving voices around, and the chilled
heart begins to thaw; hot tears, which blind the eyes
and scorch the cheeks, bring relief; the lost friend
whom we craved to see again, seems to draw near to
comfort, to solace us-then what a flood of memories, recollections, and pictures come crowding in
upon us! Our lips are unchained, there arises in our
hearts a desire unspeakable, strong as life itself, to
speak, to cry aloud, to waylay the careless, the indifferent, the stranger, if only to give some feeble voice
to our tribute of love and praise; and when to this
desire is added the earnest request of one whom she
loved with all the strength and depth of her great
soul, it becomes a labor not only of love, but an imperative call of duty, which must be obeyed-but
with all fear and trembling; for what man or what
woman shall dare to think that he or she has fathomed
the impersonal and illimitable soul of another! And
so we take up our pen with fear and trembling, and
the old wound, hidden out of sight, begins again to
bleed; we are pierced with the old sense of anguish,
which "Time" itself cannot heal; we realize once
again that we cannot part with some friends, we cannot let our angels go, nay, not even that archangels
may come in. We linger in the old familiar hauntsLong Branch, Newport, R. I., the Adirondack mountains and lakes-where we passed many a summer
holiday and held such deep and joyous converse. We
cannot again find another such spirit,-so dear, so
sweet, so gracious; what is there then left us but to
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