e book at night in bed, and corrected and put it
into shape during the daytime; and finally Leah had to copy it all
out neatly in her best handwriting, and this copying out of Barty's
books became to her an all but daily task for many years--a happy
labor of love, and one she would depute to no one else; no hired
hand should interfere with these precious productions of her
husband's genius. So that most of the standard works, English and
French, that she grew to thoroughly master were of her husband's
writing--not a bad education, I venture to think!

Besides, it was more in her nature and in the circumstances of her
life that she should become a woman of business and a woman of the
world rather than a reader of books--one who grew to thoroughly
understand life as it presented itself to her; and men and women,
and especially children; and the management of a large and much
frequented house; for they soon moved away from Southampton Row.

She quickly arrived at a complete mastery of all such science as
this--and it is a science; such a mastery as I have never seen
surpassed by any other woman, of whatever world. She would have made
a splendid Marchioness of Whitby, this daughter of a low-comedy John
Gilpin; she would have beaten the Whitby record!

She developed into a woman of the world in the best sense--full of
sympathy, full of observation and quick understanding of others'
needs and thoughts and feelings; absolutely sincere, of a constant
and even temper, and a cheerfulness that never failed--the result of
her splendid health; without caprice, without a spark of vanity,
without selfishness of any kind--generous, open-handed, charitable
to a fault; always taking the large and generous view of everything
and everybody; a little impulsive perhaps, but not often having to
regret her impulses; of unwearied devotion to her husband, and
capable of any heroism or self-sacrifice for his sake; of that I
feel sure.

No one is perfect, of course. Unfortunately, she was apt to be
somewhat jealous at first of his singularly catholic and very
frankly expressed admiration of every opposite type of female
beauty; but she soon grew to see that there was safety in numbers,
and she was made to feel in time that her own type was the arch-type
of all in his eyes, and herself the arch-representative of that type
in his heart.

She was also jealous in her friendships, and was not happy unless
constantly assured of her friends' warm