pen constantly busy.
She wrote with a rapidity which seems to have been inherited by both her
sons, more particularly by Anthony Trollope. One of her novels was
written in three weeks; another she wrote at the bedside of a son dying
of consumption, she being bound by contract to finish the work at a
given time. Acting day and night as nurse, the overtasked mother was
obliged to stimulate her nervous system by a constant use of strong
coffee, and betweenwhiles would turn to the unfinished novel and write
of fictitious joys and sorrows while her own heart was bleeding for the
beloved son dying beside her. It was no doubt owing to this constant
taxation of the brain that her intellect was but a wreck of its former
self during the last four years of her life. During this time her
condition was but a living death, though she was physically well. She
was watched over and cared for with the most unselfish devotion by her
son Thomas Adolphus and his wife, who gave up all pleasures away from
home to be near their mother. The favorite reading in these last days
was her son Anthony's novels.

And Thomas Trollope, writing of his mother's death, says: "Though we
have been so long prepared for it, and though my poor dear mother has
been in fact dead to us for many months past, and though her life, free
from suffering as it was, was such as those who loved her could not have
wished prolonged, yet for all this the last separation brings a pang
with it. She was as good and dear a mother as ever man had; and few sons
have passed so large a portion of their lives in such intimate
association with their mother as I have for more than thirty years."

This is a noble record for both mother and son. To her children Mrs.
Trollope was a providence and support in all time of sorrow or
trouble,--a cause of prosperity, a confidant, a friend, and a companion.

A grateful American makes this humble offering to her memory in the name
of justice.

There is a villa too, near Florence, "on the link of Bellosguardo," as
dear from association as Villino Trollope. It has for a neighbor the
Villa Mont' Auto, where Hawthorne lived, and which he transformed by the
magic of his pen into the Monte Bene of the "Marble Faun." Not far off
is the "tower" wherein Aurora Leigh sought peace,--and found it. The
inmate of this villa was a little lady with blue-black hair and
sparkling jet eyes, a writer whose dawn is one of promise, a chosen
friend of the noblest a