ireside were strengthened and enriched by a
voluminous correspondence. Her father, who was a very
accomplished man, had one of the largest and choicest
private libraries in New York, of which, from the time she
could read, Mrs. Eames had the freedom; in this library she
spent more time than anyone else, and more than anywhere
else, until her marriage. As a consequence, it is no
disparagement to any one else to say that during her
residence there she was intellectually quite the most
accomplished woman in Washington. Her epistolary talent was
famous in her generation.

Her correspondence if collected and published would prove to
have been not less voluminous than Mme. de Sevigne's and, in
point of literary art, in no particular inferior to that of
the famous French woman.

After three or four months spent in Washington, I returned to my home in
New York; and several years later, in the spring of 1848, suffered one
of the severest ordeals of my life. I refer to my father's death. No
human being ever entered eternity more beloved or esteemed than he, and
as I look back to my life with him I realize that I was possibly more
blessed than I deserved to be permitted to live with such a well-nigh
perfect character and to know him familiarly. From my earliest childhood
I was accustomed to see the sorrowing and oppressed come to him for
advice. He was especially qualified to perform such a function owing to
his long tenure of the office of Surrogate. Widows and orphans who could
not afford litigation always found in him a faithful friend. With a
capacity of feeling for the wrongs of others as keenly as though
inflicted upon himself, his sympathy invariably assumed a practical form
and he accordingly left behind him hosts of sorrowing and grateful
hearts. A short time before his death I visited a dying widow, a devoted
Roman Catholic, whom from time to time my father had assisted. When I
was about to leave, she said: "Say to your father I hope to meet him
among the just made perfect." This remark of a poor woman has been to me
through all these years a greater consolation than any public tribute or
imposing eulogy. Finely chiseled monuments and fulsome epitaphs are not
to be compared with the benediction of grateful hearts.

The funeral services were conducted, according to the custom of sixty
years ago, by the Rev. Dr. William Adams and the Rev. Dr. Philip