I've
forgotten that key again, I declare;" and leaving the candle burning,
and the door open, she went down-stairs, got the watchman, and secured
the proprietor of the foot, which had not moved an inch. How many women
or men could have done, or rather been all this!

_MY FATHER'S MEMOIR._

_A LETTER TO JOHN CAIRNS, D. D._

"_I praised the dead which are already dead, more than the
living which are yet alive._"

LETTER TO JOHN CAIRNS, D. D.

23 RUTLAND STREET, _15th August, 1860._

MY DEAR FRIEND,--When, at the urgent request of his trustees and family,
and in accordance with what I believe was his own wish, you undertook my
father's Memoir, it was in a measure on the understanding that I would
furnish you with some domestic and personal details. This I hoped to
have done but was unable.

Though convinced more than ever how little my hand is needed, I will now
endeavor to fulfil my promise. Before doing so, however, you must permit
me to express our deep gratitude to you for this crowning proof of your
regard for him

"Without whose life we had not been;"

to whom for many years you habitually wrote as "My father," and one of
whose best blessings, when he was "such an one as Paul the aged," was to
know that you were to him "mine own son in the gospel."

With regard to the manner in which you have done this last kindness to
the dead, I can say nothing more expressive of our feelings, and, I am
sure, nothing more gratifying to you, than that the record you have
given of my father's life, and of the series of great public questions
in which he took part, is done in the way which would have been most
pleasing to himself--that which, with his passionate love of truth and
liberty, his relish for concentrated, just thought and expression, and
his love of being loved, he would have most desired, in any one speaking
of him after he was gone. He would, I doubt not, say, as one said to a
great painter, on looking at his portrait, "It is certainly like, but it
is much better looking;" and you might well reply as did the painter,
"It is the truth, told lovingly"--and all the more true that it is so
told. You have, indeed, been enabled to speak the truth, or as the Greek
has it, {aletheuein en agape}--to truth it in love.

I have over and over again sat down to try and do what I promised and
wished--to give some faint expression of my father's life; not o