with a tale to give gladness to childhood. She had her reward
in a great pleasure that came to her from America. The children of
Boston, hearing what pains their kind friend in Ireland was taking for
her unhappy compatriots, as a recognition of their love for her and her
writings, organized a subscription. At the end of a few weeks they were
able to send her one hundred and fifty barrels of flour and rice. They
came with the simple address, worth more to her than many phrases: "To
Miss Edgeworth, for her poor."

She was deeply touched and grateful. It touched her also that the
porters, who carried the grain down to the shore, refused to be paid;
and with her own hands she knitted a woolen comforter for each man and
sent them to a friend for distribution. Before they reached their
destination the hands that had worked them were cold, and the beating of
that warm, kind heart stilled forever.

For scarcely was the famine over, and before Miss Edgeworth's over-taxed
strength had time to recoup, another and yet heavier blow was to befall
her. Indeed, many deaths and sorrows as she had known, in some respects
this was the severest that had for some years come upon her. It was
natural to see the old go before her, but not so the young, and when in
1848 her favorite sister Fanny died rather suddenly, Miss Edgeworth felt
that the dearest living object of her love had gone.

The shock did not apparently tell on her health, as she continued to
employ herself with her usual interest and sympathy in all the weal and
woe of her family and many friends, but the life-spring had snapped,
unknown perhaps even to her, certainly unknown to those around her. For
she bore up bravely, cheerfully, and was to all appearances as bright as
ever. Next to doing good, reading was still her greatest pleasure:--

Our pleasures in literature do not, I think, decline with age. Last
1st of January was my eighty-second birthday, and I think that I
had as much enjoyment from books as ever I had in my life.

History gave her particular delight:--

I am surprised to find how much more history interests me now than
when I was young, and how much more I am now interested in the same
events recorded, and their causes and consequences shown, in this
history of the French Revolution, and in all the history of Europe
during the last quarter of a century, than I was when the news came
fresh and fresh in the newspap