me
that this was "probable." Why did you not say "_certain_?" Then
I would rejoice, for when my father says a thing is certain, I
_know_ it is certain. I am happy to tell you that I am much
better; have had a long and tedious spell. I would lie for hours
and think of you away from me, and if I had not the kindest and
tenderest mother to care for me and for us all, what should we
do. I understand that your appointments have not been generally
approved by the milk-and-water strata of the party, of course,
for no thorough Jackson man would denounce, even if he did not
approve. It is my principle, as well as that of Lycurgus, to
avoid "mediums"--that is to say, people who are not decidedly one
thing or the other. In politics they are the inveterate enemies
of the State. I hear there has been a committee appointed to
visit you on your return to the Hall and present a petition for
the removal of some whom you have recently appointed. They call
themselves reformers. I want reform, too, even in court criers,
but to be forever reforming reform is absurd. I know whatever you
do is _right_, and needs no reform, my wisest and dearest of
fathers.

Write as soon as you can to your loving child,

A. E. CARROLL.

[Footnote 2: At that time the sessions of the
Legislature were not restricted, as now they are,
to sixty days.]

Mrs. Carroll was a devoted member of the Church of England, as was
natural in the daughter of staunch Dr. Stevenson.

As there were no Sunday schools in those days, Mrs. Carroll gathered
her children around her on Sunday afternoons and drilled them in the
church catechism until it was as familiar to them as their A B C; but
Anna Ella always inclined to the Westminster Confession and the tenets
in which her father's childhood had been so rigorously educated.

When about fifteen Miss Carroll was sent to a boarding school, at West
River, near Annapolis, to pursue her studies with Miss Margaret
Mercer, an accomplished teacher.

Thomas King Carroll, at the same age, had been sent to the University
of Pennsylvania, and afterward to the law school; but for this girl of
gifts so remarkable, and of a character so decided, the best thing
that the world of those times offered was a young ladies' boarding
school of the o