usual kindness,--I think
mother must have privately told him of my blunder,--and said that he
would surely remember me at Christmas.

I know that incidents like these can be of little interest to any but
myself. But what more exciting ones are to be expected in such a history
as mine? If they are related here, it is because I am requested to
record them. Still, every poor sewing-girl will consider that the making
of her first shirt is an event in her career, a difficulty to be
surmounted,--and that, even when successfully accomplished, it is in
reality only the beginning of a long career of toil.

MEMORIES OF AUTHORS.

A SERIES OF PORTRAITS FROM PERSONAL ACQUAINTANCE.

THOMAS MOORE.

More than forty years have passed since I first conversed with the poet
Thomas Moore. Afterwards it was my privilege to know him intimately. He
seldom, of late years, visited London without spending an evening at our
house; and in 1845 we passed a happy week at his cottage, Sloperton, in
the county of Wilts:--

"In my calendar
There are no whiter days!"

The poet has himself noted the time in his diary (November, 1845).

It was in the year 1822 I made his acquaintance in Dublin. He was in the
full ripeness of middle age,--then, as ever, "the poet of all circles,
and the idol of his own." As his visits to his native city were few and
far between, the power to see him, and especially to _hear_ him, was a
boon of magnitude. It was, indeed, a treat, when, seated at the piano,
he gave voice to the glorious "Melodies" that are justly regarded as the
most valuable of his legacies to mankind. I can recall that evening as
vividly as if it were not a sennight old: the graceful man, small and
slim in figure, his upturned eyes and eloquent features giving force to
the music that accompanied the songs, or rather to the songs that
accompanied the music.

Dublin was then the home of much of the native talent that afterwards
found its way to England; and there were some, Lady Morgan especially,
whose "evenings" drew together the wit and genius for which that city
has always been famous. To such an evening I make reference. It was at
the house of a Mr. Steele, then High Sheriff of the County of Dublin,
and I was introduced there by the Rev. Charles Maturin. The name is not
widely known, yet Maturin was famous in his day--and for a day--as the
author of two successful tragedies, "Bertram" and "Manuel," (in which
the elder