They fed and cheered her on her singing way.
In the quiet loveliness of early summer, and before the tide of
humanity swept down upon Appledore, she went for the last time, in
June, 1894, with a small company of intimate friends, to revisit the
different islands and the well-known haunts most dear to her. The days
were still and sweet, and she lingered lovingly over the old places,
telling the local incidents which occurred to her, and touching the
whole with a fresh light. Perhaps she knew that it was a farewell; but
if it had been revealed to her, she could not have been more tender
and loving in her spirit to the life around her.
How suddenly it seemed at last that her days with us were ended! She
had been listening to music, had been reading to her little company,
had been delighting in one of Appleton Brown's new pictures, and then
she laid her down to sleep for the last time, and flitted away from
her mortality.
The burial was at her island, on a quiet afternoon in the late summer.
Her parlor, in which the body lay, was again made radiant, after her
own custom, with the flowers from her garden, and a bed of sweet bay
was prepared by her friends Appleton Brown and Childe Hassam, on which
her form was laid.
William Mason once more played the music from Schumann which she
chiefly loved, and an old friend, James De Normandie, paid a brief
tribute of affection, spoken for all those who surrounded her.
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