aturally, modestly, almost indifferently, she received the tributes
which poured in upon her! Yet, though she cared little for praise, she
cared much for love, and for the consciousness that she was a helper and
comforter to others.

On reading the book again this last summer, I was struck by seeing how
true a transcript of herself, in more than one respect, was given in
Katy. "Why can not I make a jacket for my baby without throwing into
it the ardor of a soldier going into battle?" How ardently she threw
herself into everything she did! In friendship and love and religion
this outpouring of herself was most striking.

Her earlier books she always read or submitted to me in manuscript, and
she showed so little self-interest in them, and I so much, that they
seemed a sort of common property. I think that I had quite as much
pleasure in their success and far more pride, than herself. The Susy
books I always considered quite as superior in their way as Stepping
Heavenward. They are still peerless among books for little children.
"Henry and Bessie," too, contains some of the most beautiful religious
teaching ever written. "Fred and Maria and Me" she used to talk about
almost as if I had written it, for no other reason than that I liked it
so much.

My sister says that her daughter Nettie read "Little Susy" through
_twelve times_, getting up to read it before breakfast. She printed
(before she could write) a little letter of thanks to your wife, who
sent her the following pretty note in reply: NEW YORK, _January 10,
1854._

MY DEAR "NETTIE":--What a nice little letter you wrote me! It pleased
me very much. I shall keep it in my desk, and when I am an old woman, I
shall buy a pair of spectacles, and sit down in the chimney-corner, and
read it. When you learn to write with your own little fingers, I hope
you will write me another letter.

Your friend, with love, AUNT SUSAN.

She did nothing for effect, and made little or no effort merely to
please; she was almost too careless of the impression which she made
upon others, and, on this account, strangers sometimes thought her
cold and unsympathetic. But touch her at the right point and the right
moment, and there was no measure to her interest and warmth. She hated
all pretense and display, and the slightest symptom of them in others
shut her up and kept her grave and silent, and this, not from a severe
or Pharisaic spirit, but because the atmosphere was so foreign to he