port wine instead of phlebotomy, and the patient's rapid recovery.

My mother was at the time far past taking any part in the discussion
of the medical measures to be adopted in her case. But I am not
without a suspicion that she too, if she could have been consulted,
would have sided with phlebotomy and whist, as against modern practice
unrelieved by any such alleviation. For the phlebotomist had been a
constant attendant at her Friday night whist-table; and as it was she
lost him, for he naturally was offended at her recovery under rival
hands.

What my mother _was_ I have already said enough to show, as far as
my imperfect words can show it, in divers passages of these
reminiscences. She was the happiest natured person I ever knew--happy
in the intense power of enjoyment, happier still in the conscious
exercise of the power of making others happy; and this continued to
be the case till nearly the end. During the last few years the bright
lamp began to grow dim and gradually sink into the socket. She
suffered but little physically, but she lost her memory, and then
gradually more and more the powers of her mind generally. I have often
thought that this perishing of the mind before the exceptionally
healthy and well-constituted physical frame, in which it was housed,
may have been due to the tremendous strain to which she was subjected
during those terrible months at Bruges, when she was watching the
dying bed of a much-loved son during the day, and, dieted on green tea
and laudanum, was writing fiction most part of the night. The cause,
if such were the case, would have preceded the effect by some forty
years; but whether it is on the cards to suppose that such an effect
may have been produced after such a length of time, I have not
physiological knowledge enough to tell.

She was, I think, to an exceptional degree surrounded by very many
friends, mostly women, but including many men, at every period of her
life. But the circumstances of it caused the world of her intimates
during her youth, her middle life, and her old age, to be to a great
degree peopled by different figures.

She was during all her life full of, and fond of, fun; had an
exquisite sense of humour; and at all times valued her friends and
acquaintances more exclusively, I think, than most people do, for
their intrinsic qualities, mainly those of heart, and, not so much
perhaps intellect, accurately speaking, as brightness. There is a
passage in m