fair fortunes,--who, when he started in the world, may be said to
have had everything at his feet. But everything went wrong with
him. The touch of his hand seemed to create failure. He embarked
in one hopeless enterprise after another, spending on each all the
money he could at the time command. But the worse curse to him of
all was a temper so irritable that even those whom he loved the
best could not endure it. We were all estranged from him, and yet
I believe that he would have given his heart's blood for any of
us. His life as I knew it was one long tragedy.

After his death my mother moved to England, and took and furnished
a small house at Hadley, near Barnet. I was then a clerk in the
London Post Office, and I remember well how gay she made the place
with little dinners, little dances, and little picnics, while
she herself was at work every morning long before others had left
their beds. But she did not stay at Hadley much above a year. She
went up to London, where she again took and furnished a house,
from which my remaining sister was married and carried away into
Cumberland. My mother soon followed her, and on this occasion did
more than take a house. She bought a bit of land,--a field of three
acres near the town,--and built a residence for herself. This, I
think, was in 1841, and she had thus established and re-established
herself six times in ten years. But in Cumberland she found the
climate too severe, and in 1844 she moved herself to Florence,
where she remained till her death in 1863. She continued writing
up to 1856, when she was seventy-six years old,--and had at that
time produced 114 volumes, of which the first was not written till
she was fifty. Her career offers great encouragement to those who
have not begun early in life, but are still ambitious to do something
before they depart hence.