elief in memory of the great poet. He is
represented, dripping with seaweed, in the arms of the Angel of Death.

As I sat on my balcony hour after hour, reading and thinking of the
Shelleys, watching the changing hues of the clouds and the beautiful
bay, and listening to the sad monotone of the waves, these sweet lines
of Whittier's came to my mind:

"Its waves are kneeling on the strand,
As kneels the human knee,--
Their white locks bowing to the sand,
The priesthood of the sea!

"The blue sky is the temple's arch,
Its transept earth and air,
The music of its starry march
The chorus of a prayer."

American letters, during this sojourn abroad, told of many losses, one
after another, from our family circle; nine passed away within two
years. The last was my sister Mrs. Bayard, who died in May, 1891. She
was the oldest of our family, and had always been a second mother to her
younger sisters, and her house our second home.

The last of June my son Theodore's wife and daughter came over from
France to spend a month with us. Lisette and Nora, about the same size,
played and quarreled most amusingly together. They spent their mornings
in the kindergarten school, and the afternoons with their pony, but
rainy days I was impressed into their service to dress dolls and tell
stories. I had the satisfaction to hear them say that their dolls were
never so prettily dressed before, and that my stories were better than
any in the books. As I composed the wonderful yarns as I went along, I
used to get very tired, and sometimes, when I heard the little feet
coming, I would hide, but they would hunt until they found me. When my
youngest son was ten years old and could read for himself, I graduated
in story telling, having practiced in that line twenty-one years. I
vowed that I would expend no more breath in that direction, but the
eager face of a child asking for stories is too much for me, and my vow
has been often broken. All the time I was in England Nora claimed the
twilight hour, and, in France, Lisette was equally pertinacious. When
Victor Hugo grew tired telling his grandchildren stories, he would wind
up with the story of an old gentleman who, after a few interesting
experiences, took up his evening paper and began to read aloud. The
children would listen a few moments and then, one by one, slip out of
the room. Longfellow's old gentleman, after many exciting scenes in his
career, usual