Mary Tone, who was devotedly attached to her beautiful sister-in-law and her charming children, made up her mind to leave Ireland with Theobald’s family. Her departure left old Peter Tone and his wife very desolate, as all their other children, William, Matthew, and Arthur were far away. The grief of the old couple was the hardest thing the emigrants had to endure. With his little property of 600 books, and £700 in money, Theobald felt himself sufficiently equipped “to make good”—and Matilda was not the woman to weaken his courage with any undue display of her own feelings. “We kept our spirits admirably. The great attention manifested to us, the conviction that we were suffering in the best of causes, the hurry attending so great a change, and perhaps a little vanity in showing ourselves superior to fortune, supported us under what was certainly a trial of the severest kind.” The attentions of the kind friends in Dublin, great as they were, were far surpassed by those they found awaiting them in Belfast. The MacCrackens, the Simmses, the Neilsons, Dr. MacDonnell, and a host of others vied with each other in getting up entertainments for them; parties and excursions were the order of the day. Tone tells us of some of these in his Journal. He remembers particularly two days passed on Cave Hill. On the first, Russell, Neilson, Simms, MacCracken, and he climbed to McArt’s fort and took a solemn obligation never to desist in their efforts until they had subverted the authority of England, over their country, and asserted their independence. Another day they had a pic-nic in the Deer Park, for which the Belfast ladies, Mary Anne and Margaret MacCracken, Mrs. Neilson, Miss Simms, etc., exerted all their culinary talents; another day, even more delicious yet, was spent in a pic-nic party to beautiful Ram’s Island in Lough Neagh. After their return to town there were suppers and dances and a little music in these friends’ houses. Many, many years after, Mary Anne MacCracken, then a very old woman, told Dr. Madden of what she felt when she heard little Maria Tone sing in her clear voice, to the air of “The Cruiskeen Lawn,” her father’s spirited words: “When Rome by dividing had conquered the world.” The last evening of their stay came all too quickly. They were spending it at the MacCracken’s home, of which Bunting was an inmate. The talk turned, as it was bound to do among such ardent lovers of music, as these were, on Bunting’s collection of Irish Melodies which was well on its way to completion, and Bunting was asked to play some air from it. He chose that called “The Parting of Friends,” and as the poignant grief of the old air sought out all their hearts, Matilda Tone’s fortitude, for the first time, gave way. She burst into tears and left the room.