retired at forty from a world where she had shone
by force of beauty and wit--and a gentle voice would say: 'Stay with me,
my son, my baby. Oh, bear with me a little longer. If you only knew the
comfort it is to feel that you are in the house, to hear your voice. You
will pen a history some day that will bring you fame, and you will read
it to me here--we two, all alone in my chamber, before the world hears
it.' So I stayed on. How mother love often blinds the eyes to its own
selfishness.

"That fatal twentieth year, the time of my overthrow, brought me one good
gift, your father's friendship. It was a strange chance, that meeting,
and it was my love of hearing of past events and the questions concerning
them that brought it about. Has your father ever told you of it?

"Likely not, for his life work has been the good physician's, to bring
forth and keep alive, and mine the antiquarian's, dreaming and groping
among ruins for doubtful treasure of fallen walls.

"My mother came of English, not Knickerbocker stock like my father,
though both belong distinctly to New York; and female education being in
a somewhat chaotic state between the old regime and new, her parents,
desirous of having her receive the genteel polish of courtly manners,
music, and dancing, sent her, when about fifteen, to Mrs. Rowson's
school, then located at Hollis Street, Boston. The fame of this school
had travelled far and wide, for not only had the preceptress in her
youth, as Susanna Haswell, been governess to the children of the
beautiful Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, one of the most accomplished
women of her day, and profited by her fine taste, but her own high morals
and literary gifts made her tutorship a much sought privilege.

"While there my mother met the little New England girl who was long
afterward to become your grandmother. She had also come to study music,
for which she had a talent. My mother related to me, when I was a little
lad and used to burrow in her carved oak treasure chest and beg for
stories of the articles it contained, many fascinating tales of those two
school years, a pretty colour coming to her cheeks as she told of the
dances learned together, pas-de-deux and minuet, from old 'Doctor'
Shaffer, who was at the time second violin of the Boston Theatre, as
well as authority in the correct methods of bowing and courtesying for
gentlewomen. Your grandmother married first, and the letter telling of it
was stored away