om the day my mother was buried he was dying. Some people,
you know, die hard--some part with life lightly, as if it was a faded robe
they shook off to don a brighter one. Others--my father was one, and I am
like him--see one by one their trusts, their hopes, their loves die: then
with a deathly throe sunder themselves from life. But pardon my
digression.

When I was twenty my father died. Since then, spite of expressions of
disapproval and offers of support from my mother's family, I have
maintained myself by teaching in the schools where my father had been
known, preferring to do without assistance so long as I had health. One of
my uncles desired to take me into his family, and thus wipe out the wrong
done my father by his brother, and my aunts proffered me an income out of
their private means. I mention this to do them every justice, but I think
even a man of fashion like yourself will acknowledge the impossibility of
my accepting, while I could avoid it, a life of dependence. I could not
accept favors from those who had treated my dear parents unkindly; so I
have e'en gone my own way for these last ten years, and led a not unhappy
life, if a busy and rather wearing one.

My gay cousins, all of whom you know well--the Wilber girls, Leta and
Jennie, pretty little Lou Barton, and another set of Wilbers whom I think
you do not know so well, who are married now--my gay cousins, then, most
of them beauties, all of them rich and fashionable, are somewhat ashamed
of me, and have let me feel it in every petty way that we women know so
well how to find. I am ugly and poor, my earning my own living is a spot
upon their gentility, and I have unfortunately, and quite against my will,
more than once given them cause for serious annoyance and apprehension.
Then, one of our uncles, who is a bachelor and very rich, has insisted
that I am never to be slighted--always to be invited to everything in the
shape of a party given by the family. If it lay with me, of course I would
never accept these invitations, but I have had it explained to me over and
over again that my not doing so is visited upon the party-givers in one
way or another by our masterful uncle Rufus. So, occasionally, very much
against my inclination, I leave my little third-story room, with its cozy
fire and humble adornments, and sit in the corner of their great rooms, a
"looker-on in Vienna" in every sense.

I have many kind friends: it would be strange if in all th