We returned to Sacramento with minds refreshed and spirits brightened by
the delightful scenes through which we had passed during our coast trip.
My life seemed to have received new radiance, and all things wore the
bright "couleur de rose," when one day there seemed something in Hattie's
touching tone which, like the "shadow of coming" events, sent through my
heart a strange, premonitory thrill of sadness. She paused as if for
prayerful preparation, ere she said: "Mary, I have something _sad_,
something _terrible_ to tell you, and I wish to prepare you to bear it
with patience, even as I for five months have borne the burden with silent
submission." She then carefully, calmly, quietly revealed to me the fact
that there was feeding upon her dear life one of those horrible vampires
of human disease--a cancer, which was slowly but surely drawing her nearer
the close. Suddenly all brightness and beauty died out for me, while cloud
and gloom gathered around me, deep, dark and impenetrable; for so had
Hattie entwined herself about my heart, that to my darkened days there
seemed for me no light, no life without her. Surely--

"Sorrows come not single spies,
But in battalions,"

And while I felt myself overwhelmed by this one deep grief in quick
succession came another. One morning while at our breakfast, and without
the slightest preparation, tidings was brought to me that Chicago was
destroyed by fire.

My husband had just completed our new home, a comfortable resting place,
with lovely garden and pleasant surroundings, and thither I had hoped ere
long to go and rest from my labors. Daily, as the diagrams of the fire
reached us, we traced upon them the loved site of our home, as in the