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Letters from Egypt by Lady Lucie Duff Gordon
page 22 of 412 (05%)
with extreme admiration and regret by the generation immediately
preceding our own.

'That Lucie, Lady Duff Gordon, inherited the best of the intellect and
qualities of both these parents will, we think, hardly be disputed, and
she had besides, of her own, a certain generosity of spirit, a widespread
sympathy for humanity in general, without narrowness or sectarianism,
which might well prove her faith modelled on the sentence which appeals
too often in vain from the last page of the printed Bible to resenting
and dissenting religionists, "Multae terricolis linguae, coelestibus
una."'

* * * * *

The last two years of my mother's life were one long struggle against
deadly disease. The last winter was cheered by the presence of my
brother, but at her express desire he came home in early summer to
continue his studies, and my father and I were going out to see her, when
the news came of her death at Cairo on July 14, 1869. Her desire had
been to be among her 'own people' at Thebes, but when she felt she would
never see Luxor again, she gave orders to be buried as quietly as
possible in the cemetery at Cairo. The memory of her talent, simplicity,
stately beauty, and extraordinary eloquence, and her almost passionate
pity for any oppressed creature, will not easily fade. She bore great
pain, and what was almost a greater trial, absence from her husband, her
little daughter Urania, and her many friends, uncomplainingly, gleaning
what consolation she could by helping her poor Arab neighbours, who
adored her, and have not, I am told, forgotten the 'Great Lady' who was
so good to them.

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