head all the public charities of her sect, and do a thousand secret
kindnesses that none knew of; to answer myriads of letters, pension
endless ministers, and supply their teeming wives with continuous
baby-linen; to hear preachers daily bawling for hours, and listen untired
on her knees after a long day's labour, while florid rhapsodists
belaboured cushions above her with wearisome benedictions; all these
things had this woman to do, and for near fourscore years she fought her
fight womanfully: imperious but deserving to rule, hard but doing her
duty, severe but charitable, and untiring in generosity as in labour;
unforgiving in one instance--in that of her husband's eldest son, Thomas
Newcome; the little boy who had played on the hay, and whom at first she
had loved very sternly and fondly.

Mr. Thomas Newcome, the father of his wife's twin boys, the junior
partner of the house of Hobson Brothers and Co., lived several years
after winning the great prize about which all his friends so
congratulated him. But he was, after all, only the junior partner of the
house. His wife was manager in Threadneedle Street and at home--when the
clerical gentlemen prayed they importuned Heaven for that sainted woman a
long time before they thought of asking any favour for her husband. The
gardeners touched their hats, the clerks at the bank brought him the
books, but they took their orders from her, not from him. I think he grew
weary of the prayer-meetings, he yawned over the sufferings of the
negroes, and wished the converted Jews at Jericho. About the time the
French Emperor was meeting with his Russian reverses Mr. Newcome died:
his mausoleum is in Clapham Churchyard, near the modest grave where his
first wife reposes.

When his father married, Mr. Thomas Newcome, jun., and Sarah his nurse
were transported from the cottage where they had lived in great comfort