was so tolerable on Wednesday morning that I went with the Milnes of
Park House to Henton Park races, which I liked very well, but as things
have turned out I heartily repent going. Ann was, we hoped, positively
recovering on Monday and Tuesday, but it seems to have been a lightening
before death. She was a very long time in the agonies of death, but
seemed to suffer very little. Our afflicted brother joins me in best
love to you and your dear children. Kind compliments to Mr. Hinde.

"I remain,

"Your affectionate Sister,

"M. HAMMERTON."

The letter is without date, but it bears the Manchester postmark of
September 27, 1834, and the day of my birth was the tenth of the same
month. The reader may have observed a discrepancy with reference to my
mother's health. First it is said that the doctors all agreed in the
opinion that she died of mere weakness, without any absolute disease,
but afterwards consumption is alluded to. I am not sure, even yet,
whether my mother was really consumptive or only suffered from debility.
Down to the time when I write this (fifty-one years after my mother's
death) there have never been any symptoms of consumption in me.

No portrait of my mother was ever taken, so that I have never been able
to picture her to myself otherwise than vaguely, but I remember that on
one occasion in my youth when I played the part of a young lady in a
charade, several persons present who had known her, said that the
likeness was so striking that it almost seemed as if she had appeared to
them in a vision, and they told me that if I wanted to know what my