woman, not universally liked,
but intensely kind and true, and much beloved by all who have cared to
penetrate through her shell.

There! my work is done, though I fear it is a weaker likeness of my
young Alcides than even the faded photograph by my side, but I could
not brook that you, my children, should grow up unknowing of the great
character to whom your father and I owe one another, and all besides
that is best in our lives. There are things that must surprise you
about your dear father. Remember that he insisted on my putting them
in, and would not have them softened, because, he said, you ought to
have the portrait in full, and that, save at his own expense, you could
not know the full gratitude he feels to the man who made a new era in
our lives. He says he is not afraid either of the example for you, or
that you will respect him less, and I know you will not, for you will
only see his truth and generosity.

L. P. T.

All that your mother has written is true--blessings on her!--every word
of it, except that she never could, and I hope none of you ever will,
understand the depth and blackness of the slough Harold Alison drew me
out of, by just being the man he was; nor will she show you--for indeed
she is blind to it herself--that it was no other than she, with her
quiet, upright sweetness and resolution, that was the making of him and
of both of us. Very odd it is that a woman should set it all down in
black and white, and never perceive it was all her own doing. But if
you see it, young people, what you have to do is to be thankful for the
mother you have got and try to be worthy of her, and if the drop of
Alison blood in you should make one of you even the tenth part of what
Harold was, then you'll be your father's pride, and much more than he
deserves.

D. E. ST. G. T.

Thank you, dear brother, for having let me see this, though I know Lucy
did not intend it for my eyes, or she would not have been so hard on
poor mamma. It shows me how naughty I must have been to let her get
such a notion of our relations with one another, but an outsider can
never judge of such things. For the rest, dear Lucy has done her best,
and in many ways she did know him better than anybody else did, and he
looked up to her more than to anyone. But even she cannot reach to the
inmost depth of the sweetness out of the stron