ossessed a delicate love
of fun, and was full of dry humor. Once during a visit from her
husband's brother, Richard Mott, of Toledo, Ohio, who like James was a
very silent man, she became suddenly aware of their absence and
started to look for them. Finding them seated on either side of a
large wood fire in the drawing-room, she said, "Oh, I thought you must
both be here it was so quiet."

In speaking of them, Robert Collyer says: "If James and Lucretia had
gone around the world in search of a mate, I think they would have
made the choice which heaven made for them. They had lived together
more than forty years when I first knew them. I thought then, as I
think now, that it was the most perfect wedded life to be found on
earth. They were both of a most beautiful presence. He, large, fair,
with kindly blue eyes, and regular features. She, slight, with dark
eyes and hair. Both, of the sunniest spirit; both, free to take their
own way, as such fine souls always are, and yet their lives were so
perfectly one that neither of them led or followed the other, so far
as one could observe, by the breadth of a line. He could speak well,
in a slow, wise way, when the spirit moved him, and the words were all
the choicer because they were so few. But his greatness, for he was a
great man, lay still in that fine, silent manhood, which would only
break into fluent speech as you sat with him by the bright wood fire
in winter, while the good wife went on with her knitting, putting it
swiftly down a score of times in an hour, to pound a vagrant spark
which had snapped on the carpet, or as we sat under the trees in the
summer twilight. Then James Mott would open his heart to those he
loved, and touch you with wonder at the depth and beauty of his
thoughts; or tell you stories of the city where when a young man he
lived, or of the choice humors of ancient Quakers, who went through
the world esteeming laughter vain, and yet set the whole world which
knew them laughing at their quaint ways and curious fancies."

In his young days, James Mott was a teacher; later on he engaged in
the cotton business, but abandoned it when it was becoming
remunerative, because of its connection with slave labor. He finally
took up the wool business, and retired with a competency some years
before his death, which enabled them to take a trip to Europe, and
afterward live the life of leisure they desired, indulging their
literary tastes. James Mott wrote a very