Stella Rosevelt — page 251: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

AN INTERESTING STORY. 245 said-—and I knew as well as if I had been told, that you were in some way connected with my lost Star, and I watched over you all the night through, feeling almost as if some sweet spirit had been sent from her to me, to give me a little ray of comfort at the end of my long, loveless life. ‘‘When, the next morning, you told me that your grand- mother had named you, and that her name was Stella Win- throp, I had not a doubt; I felt convinced that you must be the child of one of her sons. You thought it merely a strange coincidence, but I knew better, and all my boasted coldness and hardness melted away, and I began to love you then and there. When that dreadful explosion occurred, and you urged me to save myself, as ‘doubtless | had dear friends’ and ‘you had no one to love you’—when you refused to leave me, and took up your station by my side to die with me, as we both believed, I felt as if something of the spirit of my lost love was shining through you. ‘Then your tenderness toward, and your care of -me—your heroic seif-denial and efforts to save my life while we were helplessly afloat on the mighty ocean—your sweet voice singing those hymns of faith and cheer, completed the conquest of my hardened nature. I can never make you understand how disappointed I was, on arriving in New York, to find you gone. I meant to tell you something of myself, and learn your own destination, so that I might see you once in awhile. ‘‘ But I never forgot you; and when I visited my nephew in the West, and met only coldness and neglect, simply because of my misfortunes, [ could not help contrasting it with your kind attention to an entire stranger. ‘‘] left those heartless people and came to my niece, and met with the same reception, when before they had always fawned at my feet, flattered and humored meas if I had been something more than common clay. ‘‘] felt forsaken; no one loved me, no one wanted me; I —-— (E(0) > (E(@) Ebooks