from every selfish pain by the elastic vigor of her power for
unselfish devotion to the good of others. She said that happiness was
to have an unselfish work to do, and the power to do it.

It has been said that Jane's only fault was that she was too good.
I think she carried her unselfishness too often to a short-sighted
excess, breaking down her health, and thus abridging her opportunities
for more permanent advantage to those whom she would have died to
serve; but it was solely on her own responsibility, and in consequence
of her accumulative energy of temperament, that made her unconscious
of the strain until too late.

Her brain was constitutionally sensitive and almost abnormally active;
and she more than once overtaxed it by too continuous study, or by a
disregard of its laws of health, or by a stupendous multiplicity of
cares, some of which it would have been wiser to leave to others. She
took everybody's burdens to carry herself. She was absorbed in the
affairs of those she loved,--of her home circle, of her sisters'
families, and of many a needy one whom she adopted into her
solicitude. She was thoroughly fond of children and of all that they
say and do, and would work her fingers off for them, or nurse them day
and night. Her sisters' children were as if they had been her own, and
she revelled in all their wonderful manifestations and development.
Her friends' children she always cared deeply for, and was hungry for
their wise and funny remarks, or any hint of their individuality. Many
of these things she remembered longer than the mothers themselves, and
took the most thorough satisfaction in recounting.

I have often visited her school, and it seemed like a home with a
mother in it. There we took sweet counsel together, as if we had come