But her face was now turned homeward and motherward. Their passage was taken in a sailing vessel, the Elizabeth. Fate again loomed gloomily on her path. D'Ossoli had been warned years ago to "beware of the sea," and Margaret said, "I am absurdly fearful, and various omens have combined to give me a dark feeling. In case of mishap, however, I shall perish with my husband and child, and we may be transferred to some happier state."

God grant that this is now a blessed reality! Every one knows the result. Their captain was a victim of small-pox, and Angelo just escaped. When just in sight of land the ship struck on Fire Island beach at daybreak. The rest is too agonizing to redescribe, when all have the scene in their own minds. Her death was like all the rest; within sight of land, an idle life-boat, beach-pirates- not one to save.

Channing exclaims: "Did the last scene appear but as the fitting close to a life of storms, where no safe haven was ever in reach, where thy richest treasures were so often stranded, where even the nearest and dearest seemed always too far off, or too late to help?" She died for love, she might have been saved, but all must be saved or lost. What a tableau for immortality was Margaret, seated in her white robe at the foot of the foremast, her fair hair fallen loose upon her shoulders, face to face with death! This is her epitaph: -"By birth a citizen of New England; by adoption a citizen of Rome; by genius, belonging to the world." Better than this, is the testimony of a friend: "She helped whoever knew her."

"Thus closed thy day in darkness and in tears;

Thus waned a life, alas! too full of pain;

But Oh, thou noble woman! thy brief life
Though full of sorrow, was not lived in vain."

Not in vain, if the women of this land avoid her errors, imitate her virtues, and endeavor to carry out the reforms which she inaugurated. Let us adopt her motto, "Give us truth;" her watchword, "Patience," and, with her, — "love best to be a woman."

CHAPTER XIV.

ABBY HOPPER GIBBONS.

BY LUCIA GILBERT RUNKLE.

"Father Hopper's" Work Among Convicts and Felons - First Sunday Services in a Jail-Abby Hopper's Girlhood-Following in the Footsteps of Her Father-Her Work among the Inmates of the New York Tombs -The "Isaac T. Hopper Home "The School for Street ChildrenThe Waifs and Strays of Randall's Island Charity Children - An Appeal for Dolls - Generous Response - Affecting Incident-The Story of Robert Denyer - Mrs. Gibbons' Work During the War-Nursing Union Soldiers-The Draft Riots in New York-An Exciting TimeAttacking Mrs. Gibbons' House-Havoc and Devastation Wrought by the Mob-Work After the War-A Noble Life.

HE "Hapsburgh lip," the "Guelph heaviness," the "Adams temper," are historic. That subtle drop of blood which forever bequeaths its tendencies descends from sire to son through long generations. But not less certainly does excellence derive itself from excellence. Philanthropy in certain races is an inheritance, and the Hopper good-will is as truly a characteristic as the "Hapsburgh lip."

The father of Mrs. Gibbons, Isaac T. Hopper,

of beautiful memory, spent sixty-five years of his allotted fourscore in constant, cheerful, brotherly labors for the outcast, the prisoner, and the fugitive. When he left his home, at the age of sixteen, to begin life for himself, his mother, a woman of lofty and generous character, said to him: "My son, you are now going forth to make your own way in the world. Always remember that you are as good as any other person; but remember, also, that you are no better." This counsel he received as a birthright, and

the Hopper claim to it still holds good. On the one side he had always the courage of his opinions, the self-respect that

"Dares to be

In the right with two or three;"

on the other, he kept the simplest modesty, without self-consciousness. His wife was a woman of great beauty and singular high-mindedness. They belonged to the society of Friends, and believed in the duty of the simplest living, that worldliness might not corrupt or superfluities defraud charity.

Into this plain home many sons and daughters were born, to delight in the beauty and sweetness of their mother, and that resistless charm of their witty, fun-loving, sport-devising, story-telling, dramatic, Quaker father, which, when he was an old man, still drew children to crowd about him, and prefer "Father Hopper" to their young playmates. From babyhood his own boys and girls were familiar with instances of want and misery that might have made them unhappy had there been any morbidness and sentimentalism in the atmosphere of the household. But they were taught, with a simple matter-of-course-ness which precluded harm, that the unfortunate had a human claim upon them. Time and sympathy were not to be wasted in vain pity, but devoted to practical help. Abused apprentices, fugitive slaves, wronged seamen, defrauded workwomen, were familiar figures in their home. On Saturday afternoon they used to take long country rambles with their father, always stopping at the prison to leave whatever comforts they had been able to procure for its inmates. For many years Friend Hopper was an official inspector of prisons, and a tireless Good Samaritan to the most questionable neighbor.

Those were days when it was still a recent discovery that convicts were human beings, capable of reformation, and penetrable to kindness. Near the close of the last century the Rev. Dr. Rogers of Philadelphia, one of the committee of the first society formed in this country "for relieving the miseries of public prisons," proposed to address a religious

exhortation to the prisoners on Sunday. The keeper assured him that his life would be in danger. Solitary confinement was the rule of the jail. If the convicts were allowed to assemble together it was feared that they would overpower the guard and escape, to rob and murder as they went. The sheriff finally granted an order for the performance of religious services. But the warden obeyed it with fear and trembling, actually ordering a loaded cannon to be planted near the clergyman, a gunner beside it with a lighted match, while the motley worshippers were ranged in solid column, directly in front of their grim threatener. This is believed to have been the first attempt ever made in America to hold Sunday services in a jail.

Friend Hopper used to say that there was not a convict in Philadelphia, however desperate, with whom he should fear to trust himself alone at midnight anywhere. He was once warned against a certain violent and revengeful felon who had been heard to threaten the life of a keeper. Thereupon he summoned the man, telling him that he was wanted to pile some lumber in a cellar, and went down with him to hold the light. They remained for more than an hour in that solitary place, the Quaker talking in the friendliest way to his sullen companion. When they came up again it was plain that the man's dangerous mood was past, for the time, at least. Presently it became the rule, whenever the final resources of prison discipline failed, to send for Friend Hopper, whose shrewd kindness prevailed in the end against the most dogged obstinacy and malevolence.

All the children of this extraordinary man inherited his spirit. But his second daughter, Abby, heard the "inner voice" calling upon her to take up his peculiar work in his peculiar way. Teaching in girlhood, and mothering the younger children, left by their mother's long illness and death to their elder sisters, she still found time to be her father's constant aid and counsellor.

After her marriage and removal to New York cares came upon her in battalions. With no home duty neglected,