e vividness of his
imagination gives us a true insight into times long since gone by; it
shows virtue her own feature, vice her own image, and the very age and
body of the time his form and pressure. In history he goes beyond the
political and conventional--showing us the thought, the hope, the fear,
the passion of the soul.

His was the masculine mind. The divination and subtle intuitions which
are to be found scattered through his pages, like violets growing among
the rank swale of the prairies--all these sweet, odorous things came from
his wife. She gave him of her best thought, and he greedily absorbed it
and unconsciously wrote it down as his own.

There are those who blame and berate; volumes have been written to show
the inconsiderateness of this man toward the gentle lady who was his
intellectual comrade. But they know not life who do this thing.

It is a fact that Carlyle never rushed to pick up Jeannie's handkerchief.
I admit that he could not bow gracefully; that he could not sing tenor,
nor waltz, nor tell funny stories, nor play the mandolin; and if I had
been his neighbor I would not have attempted to teach him any of these
accomplishments.

Once he took his wife to the theater; and after the performance he
accidentally became separated from her in the crowd and trudged off home
alone and went to bed forgetting all about her---but even for this I do
not indict him. Mrs. Carlyle never upbraided him for this forgetfulness,
neither did she relate the incident to any one, and for these things I to
her now reverently lift my hat.

Jeannie Welsh Carlyle had capacity for pain, as it seems all great souls
have. She suffered--but then suffering is not all suffering and pain is
not all pain.

Life is often dark, but then there are rifts in the clouds when we behold
the glorious deep blue of the sky. Not a day passes but that the birds
sing in the branches, and the tree-tops poise backward and forward in
restful, rhythmic harmony, and never an hour goes by but that hope bears
us up on her wings as the eagle does her young. And ever just before the
year dies and the frost comes, the leaves take on a gorgeous hue and the
color of the flowers then puts to shame for brilliancy all the plainer
petals of Springtime.

And I know Mr. and Mrs. Carlyle were happy, so happy, at times, that they
laughed and cried for joy. Jeannie gave all, and she saw her best thought
used--carried further, written out and given to the w