The story of her first meeting with her future husband, of her engagement to him, of their wedding-journey, is told with the simplicity and unaffected candor that were characteristic of her. The letter to her mother in which she asks her consent to the marriage, shows mother and daughter in the happiest light; it is the highest praise that could be awarded the training the Southgates had given their children. Perfect love had bred perfect confidence, and it is certainly pleasant to know that the hearts and judgments of the parents could only confirm the decision of their daughter. Mr. Walter Bowne was everything that the most exacting parents could wish as the husband of a daughter so dear to them. But the new life of happiness thus entered upon was brief, and in a few months more than six years it had come to an end. In 1803 Mr. Bowne and Miss Southgate were married. In 1806 their first child, a boy, named Walter, after his father, was born; and two years later, in July, 1808, came their second child, a girl, named Mary, after Mrs. Bowne’s mother. After the birth of this child, Mrs. Bowne did not recover her strength, and as winter was coming on, the medical men recommended a sea-voyage and a visit to a warmer climate. It was determined to send the invalid to Charleston, S. C.; and accordingly Mrs. Bowne set out, accompanied by her sister Octavia and her husband, Mr. Browne, leaving Mr. Bowne in New York, where he had some business-affairs to settle before he should join his wife later in the season. Unhappily, the sea-voyage proved a disastrous experiment; and when the party arrived at Charleston, Mrs. Bowne was in so enfeebled a condition from its effects that her sister gave up all hope of saving her life. She failed rapidly, and died on the 20th of February, only two months after her arrival. Mr. Bowne, who, in common with her family, had probably no idea of the serious nature of his wife’s illness when she left New York, yet made all the haste he could to follow her, but had the inexpressible grief to arrive too late. His only consolation was in the fact that her suffering had been brief, and that her departure was serene, while all that a sister’s affectionate devotion could avail to comfort her had been given without stint from a full heart; and even strangers in a strange city had been moved, by the beauty and loveliness of this young mother, and by her pitiful case, deprived of husband and children, to shield her and cheer her with all that the warmhearted Southern hospitality knows so well to bestow. She was buried in Charleston and her grave was hid in flowers sent by the people of the town and the neighboring plantations, many of whom had only heard her name and story.