From this moment she became, not the slave, but the
queen of her affections; and when she died, in 1877, the sun appeared
to set upon her daughter's life. On the morning after Mrs. Thaxter's
sudden death, seventeen years later, a friend asked her eldest son
where his mother was, with the intent to discover if she had been well
enough to leave her room. "Oh," he replied, "her mother came in the
night and took her away." This reply showed how deeply all who were
near to Celia Thaxter were impressed with the fact that to see her
mother again was one of the deepest desires of her heart.
The development wrought in her eager character by those early days of
exceptional experience gives a new sense of what our poor humanity may
achieve, left face to face with the vast powers of nature.
In speaking of the energy of Samuel Haley, one of the early settlers
of the islands, she says he learned to live as independently as
possible of his fellow-men; "for that is one of the first things a
settler on the Isles of Shoals finds it necessary to learn." Her own
lesson was learned perfectly. The sunrise was as familiar to her eyes
as the sunset, and early and late the activity of her mind was rivaled
by the ceaseless industry of her hands. She pays a tribute to the
memory of Miss Peabody, of Newburyport, who went to Star Island in
1823 and "did wonders for the people during the three years of her
stay. She taught the school, visited the families, and on Sundays read
to such audiences as she could collect, took seven of the poor female
children to live with her at the parsonage, instructed all who would
learn in the arts of carding, spinning, weaving, knitting, sewing,
braiding mats, etc.
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