r memory
enabled her to authenticate them with name, date, and circumstances of
vivid reality. From that shadowy line of incidents which marks the
twilight boundary between the spiritual world and the present life she
drew legends of peculiar clearness, but invested with the mysterious
charm which always dwells in that uncertain region; and the shrewd
flash of her eye, and the keen, bright smile with which she answered
the wondering question, 'What _do_ you suppose it was?' or, 'What
could it have been?' showed how evenly rationalism in her mind kept
pace with romance.

"The retired room in which she thus read, studied, thought, and
surveyed from afar the whole world of science and literature, and in
which she received friends and entertained children, was perhaps the
dearest and freshest spot to her in the world. There came a time,
however, when the neat little independent establishment was given up,
and she went to associate herself with two of her nieces in keeping
house for a boarding-school of young girls. Here her lively manners
and her gracious interest in the young made her a universal favorite,
though the cares she assumed broke in upon those habits of solitude
and study which formed her delight. From the day that she surrendered
this independency of hers, she had never, for more than a score of
years, a home of her own, but filled the trying position of an
accessory in the home of others. Leaving the boarding-school, she
became the helper of an invalid wife and mother in the early nursing
and rearing of a family of young children,--an office which leaves no
privacy and no leisure. Her bed was always shared with some little
one; her territories were exposed to the constant inroads of little
pattering feet; and all the various sicknesses and ailments of
delicate childhood made absorbing drafts upon her time.

"After a while she left New England with the brother to whose
family she devoted herself. The failing health of the wife and mother
left more and more the charge of all things in her hands; servants
were poor, and all the appliances of living had the rawness and
inconvenience which in those days attended Western life. It became her
fate to supply all other people's defects and deficiencies.
Wherever a hand failed, there must her hand be. Whenever a foot
faltered, she must step into the ranks. She was the one who thought
for and cared for and toiled for all, yet made never a claim that any
one should care