wn that is scattered by a passing
breeze.

"She continued to reside in that unostentatious home, obedient to the
rules of the school as the youngest pupil, dining with the children at
their early hour, and returning to her sanctuary, whence she sent forth
rapidly and continuously what won for her the adoration of the young and
the admiration of the old. But though she ceased to reside with her
grandmother, she was most devoted in her attentions to her aged
relative, and trimmed her caps and bonnets and quilled her frills as
usual. I have seen the old lady's borders and ribbons mingled with pages
of manuscript, and known her to put aside a poem to 'settle up'
grandmamma's cap for Sunday. These were the minor duties in which she
indulged; but her grandmother owed the greater part, if not the entire,
of her comfort to the generous and unselfish nature of that gifted girl.
Her mother I never saw: _morally_ right in all her arrangements, she was
_mentally_ wrong,--and the darling poet of the public had no loving
sympathy, no tender care from her. L. E. L. had passed through the
sufferings of a neglected childhood, and but for the love of her
grandmother she would have known next to nothing of the love of
motherhood. Thus she was left alone with her genius: for admiration,
however grateful to a woman's senses, never yet filled a woman's heart.

"When I first knew her, and for some time after, she was childishly
untidy and negligent in her dress: her frocks were tossed on, as if
buttons and strings were unnecessary incumbrances,--one sleeve off the
shoulder, the other on,--and her soft, silky hair brushed 'any how': but
Miss Emma Roberts, whose dress was always in good taste, determined on
her reformation, and gradually the young poet, as she expressed it, 'did
not know herself.' I use the epithet 'young,' because she was
wonderfully youthful in appearance, and positively as she grew older
looked younger,--her delicate complexion, the transparent tenderness of
her skin, and the playful expression of her child-like features adding
to the deception.

"I was one day suddenly summoned to Hans Place, and drawn into a
consultation on the important subject of a fancy-ball, which Miss Landon
and Miss Emma Roberts had 'talked over' Miss Lance to let them give to
their friends. They wished me to appear as the 'wild Irish girl,' or the
genius of Erin, with an Irish harp, to which I was to sing snatches of
the melodies. Miss Spence was