when
applied to that splendid life-achievement, the "Concordance," of which
Mary Lamb was the grandmother.
Emma Isola married Edward Moxon, and the Moxon home was the home of Mary
Lamb whenever she wished to make it so, to the day of her death. The
Moxons did good by stealth, and were glad they never awoke and found it
fame.
"What shall I do when Mary leaves me, never to return?" once said Charles
to Manning. But Mary lived for full twenty years after Charles had gone,
and lived only in loving memory of him who had devoted his life to her.
She seemed to exist just to talk of him and to garland the grave in the
little old churchyard at Edmonton, where he sleeps. Wordsworth says, "A
grave is a tranquillizing object: resignation in time springs up from it
as naturally as wild flowers bespread the turf." Her work was to look
after the "pensioners" and carry out the wishes of "my brother Charles."
But the pensioners were laid away to rest, one after the other, and the
gentle Mary, grown old and feeble, became a pensioner, too, but thanks to
that divine humanity that is found in English hearts, she never knew it.
To the last, she looked after "the worthy poor," and carried flowers once
a year to the grave of the gallant Captain Reynolds at Highgate, and never
tired of sounding the praises of Charles and excusing the foibles of
Coleridge. She lived only in the past, and its loving memories were more
than a ballast 'gainst the ills of the present.
And so she went down into the valley and entered the great shadow, telling
in cheerful, broken musings of a brother's love.
And then she was carried to the churchyard at Edmonton. There she rests in
the grave with her brother. In life they were never separated, and in
death they are not divided.
JANE AUSTEN
Delaford is a nice place I can tell you; exactly what I call a
nice, old-fashioned place, full of comforts, quite shut in with
great garden-walls that are covered with fruit-trees, and such a
mulberry-tree in the corner. Then there is a dovecote, some
delightful fish-ponds, and a very pretty canal, and everything,
in short, that one could wish for; and moreover it's close to the
church and only a quarter of a mile from the turnpike road.
--_Sense and Sensibility_
[Illustration: JANE AUSTEN]
It was at Cambridge, England, I met him--a fine, intelligent clergyman he
was, too.
"He's not a 'Varsity man," said my new acquaint
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