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

anne ~.. cotta
hand in Burr's pocket. Mr. T said he should never forget
the look of scorn with which he cast the little girl from him;
he never spoke to her again. Whatever may have been his faults,
it is melancholy to see an old man like him walking among his
fellow-men scorning and scorned. I have a fellow-feeling with
misanthropes; that is, I can understand how a noble nature
should turn from the mass of its fellow-creatures too often with
pity or contempt; it should be pity, pity for their selfishness and
petty malice- their stupidity, living in such a world of wonders,
where every pebble and every blade of grass is a miracle and a
mystery, yet living and dying with scarcely a thought above the
sod that at length covers their dust. Yet, were we made to
soar? May not genius be a disease? Oh, dear I it is dull talking
to one's self-one wants contradiction sometimes.
20thb. Since I wrote here last, I have stood by the death-bed of
and followed to her narrow home my friend C-. 0 Heaven!
what a scene! -to see the dread conqueror clasp in his embrace
the form we have often caressed, and the cold damp earth heaped
over the bosom that cherished high aspirations and warm affections! To-night I have been to the grave. One week ago I
spoke to her, I held her hand, I kissed the cheek that daylight
may never more look upon.
Answer me, burning stars of night,
Where is the spirit gone?
How strange that though I have often thought of death, and
even meditated hastening it, I never till now knew the weight
of mortality! Hereafter, let me live with the last hour before
me. I have not loved my friends enough; I have been exacting
of their love, and avaricious of my own. How mad, how insensible, I have been! I see myself in a new light,- an intellectual
and moral being, by a mysterious destiny brought into existence,
borne irresistibly along toward a gulf which I cannot fathom,
and over whose depths hang clouds dark and impenetrable.
Every moment hurries me along; and yet I ask not, I think not,
I know not, to what.
360