ness or error about her; and everybody that lives to
remember her, whether bond or free, servant, acquaintance, relation,
all say the same. Why, cousin, that mother has been all that has stood
between me and utter unbelief for years. She was a direct embodiment and
personification of the New Testament,--a living fact, to be accounted
for, and to be accounted for in no other way than by its truth. O,
mother! mother!" said St. Clare, clasping his hands, in a sort of
transport; and then suddenly checking himself, he came back, and seating
himself on an ottoman, he went on:

"My brother and I were twins; and they say, you know, that twins ought
to resemble each other; but we were in all points a contrast. He had
black, fiery eyes, coal-black hair, a strong, fine Roman profile, and
a rich brown complexion. I had blue eyes, golden hair, a Greek outline,
and fair complexion. He was active and observing, I dreamy and inactive.
He was generous to his friends and equals, but proud, dominant,
overbearing, to inferiors, and utterly unmerciful to whatever set itself
up against him. Truthful we both were; he from pride and courage, I from
a sort of abstract ideality. We loved each other about as boys generally
do,--off and on, and in general;--he was my father's pet, and I my
mother's.

"There was a morbid sensitiveness and acuteness of feeling in me on
all possible subjects, of which he and my father had no kind of
understanding, and with which they could have no possible sympathy. But
mother did; and so, when I had quarreled with Alfred, and father looked
sternly on me, I used to go off to mother's room, and sit by her. I
remember just how she used to look, with her pale cheeks, her deep,
soft, serious eyes, her white dress,--she always wore white; and I used
to think of her whenever I read in Revelations about the saints that
were arrayed in fine linen, clean and white. She had a great deal of
genius of one sort and another, particularly in music; and she used
to sit at her organ, playing fine old majestic music of the Catholic
church, and singing with a voice more like an angel than a mortal
woman; and I would lay my head down on her lap, and cry, and dream, and
feel,--oh, immeasurably!--things that I had no language to say!

"In those days, this matter of slavery had never been canvassed as it
has now; nobody dreamed of any harm in it.

"My father was a born aristocrat. I think, in some preexistent state, he
must have been i